Beauty And The Beast Actor Responds To The LeFou Controversy

One of the talking points around Disney's new live-action Beauty and the Beast involves the character LeFou and how he has an "exclusively gay moment." A movie theater in Alabama said it would not screen the movie because of this. Now, actor Ewan McGregor, who plays the candlestick Lumiere in the movie, has weighed in with his own take on the matter.

"He's a gay character," McGregor said with a shrug in an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last night. "It's 2017, for f**k's sake, you know?" Minor Beauty and the Beast spoilers follow.

According to Vulture, the "gay moment" in Beauty and the Beast comes at the end of the movie when LeFou dances with another man. This is shown on screen for about two seconds, the site said.

Condon broke the news about LeFou in an interview with the UK magazine Attitude.

"LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston," the director said. "He's confused about what he wants. It's somebody who's just realizing that he has these feelings. And [LeFou actor Josh Gad] makes something really subtle and delicious out of it. And that's what has its payoff at the end ... it is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie."

Condon later told ScreenCrush that the storyline about LeFou's sexuality has been "overblown." For his part, Gad told USA Today that "there was nothing in the script that said 'LeFou is gay.'"

Still, the controversy continues. According to Variety, Beauty and the Beast will not screen in Malaysia, following the country's decision to remove the "gay moment" from the movie.

Also in the Colbert interview, McGregor says he's never seen the 1991 original animated Beauty and the Beast. This is a good thing, he says, because he wasn't beholden to trying to exactly recreate how Lumiere sounded in the original.

Beauty and the Beast opens on March 17. It also stars Emma Watson, Luke Evans, Ian McKellan, Emma Thompson, and Stanley Tucci. It's expected to have a huge opening, with estimates putting its US box office haul in the area of $120 million, which would make it one of the most successful March openings ever.

This story has been updated.