Josh Gad is still freaked out over Disney making a big deal out of Beauty and the Beast’s “exclusively gay moment.”

We’ve come a long way since Disney My first ‘exclusively gay moment’ When the studio made a big deal about LeFou in its live action beauty and the beast– Mostly in A Big frustrating circleNow we are back in the mouse house Cutting LGBTQ+ stories From the media to appeal to conservative parents again. But now, nearly eight years later, the star at the center of the hype is speaking out about how shocked he was to see Disney go overboard.

“I personally certainly didn’t feel like LeFou was who the gay community was sadly waiting for,” Josh Gad said of his role as LeFou in the film, writing in his new memoir. In serious we trust (via Entertainment Weekly). “I can’t quite imagine a Pride celebration in honor of the ‘defining cinematic moment’ that involves a semi-evil Disney boyfriend dancing with a guy for half a second. I mean, if I were gay, I’m sure I’d be pissed.”

However, that’s what Disney tried to do in 2017 beauty and the beastFilm director Bill Condon teased the moment — in which LeFou dances with a male partner during the film’s climactic party sequence — in a big move for Disney’s on-screen LGBTQ+ efforts, His (now infamous) description As an “exclusively gay moment” in an interview with behavior. But according to Gad, this moment was barely discussed during filming as an obviously intentional moment, and was never meant to be seen as anything more than a quiet gesture.

“Because I was a side character,” Gad writes, “I didn’t want to suddenly put the weight of sexuality on this character who was in no way driving the movie.” “But the moment (as it was described to me) seemed innocuous enough—a pleasant blink of an eye, and you’ll miss it—a little beat.”

Instead, Condon’s framing of the moment turned it into a media firestorm, with fanatics outraged at the idea of ​​two men dancing together (something that had certainly never happened in a Disney film before) and the studio itself eagerly taking advantage of the ability to get a little spot of weird acting on Big screen. This wouldn’t be the first time over the next few years, either, that Disney was seemingly able to reiterate that it was casting its “first openly gay character” for multiple press cycles, even with the studio and its major affiliates. He barely took steps With strange characters and their outside existence These quick confessions.

“If the audience had described it as a fun, gay-only moment, I would have been thrilled,” Gad concludes, “but the moment we pointed it out and apparently congratulated ourselves, we would have brought hell and fury.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same – even though Disney is now calling for hell and fury Her own cheesemore than anything else.

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