Josh Gad

Last week it seemed like the live-action Beauty and the Beast remake was about to make history with the Disney’s first openly gay character. But now director Bill Condon says the whole thing has been blown out of proportion.

When director Bill Condon confirmed that his live-action Beauty and the Beast remake features a gay character, it was only a matter of time before someone made a fuss over it. Turns out, that someone is a somewhere — a drive-in theater in Alabama, where the owner is refusing to screen the new Disney film because Josh Gad’s character, LeFou, is gay.

To say that the first trailer for Beauty and the Beast was evocative of the 1991 animated classic would be an understatement; it was a live-action carbon copy, and if Disney’s remake of Cinderella was any indication, we were in for yet another tedious — if visually stunning, well-acted and beautifully-designed — exercise in nostalgia-based capitalism. But Bill Condon’s live-action update of Beauty and the Beast is more reimagining than remake, a lavish and lovely take on a familiar tale (as old as time, no doubt) that enriches its source material without betraying it, embellishing a cherished antique with modern ideas.

Slowly but surely, Disney is becoming a little more woke. With last year’s politically-minded (and now Oscar-winning) Zootopia, announcements of Marvel’s first female-led superhero movie and first black superhero movie, and making Ava DuVernay the first woman of color to helm a $100 million movie, the studio is adding diversity to their roster little by little. Now the studio has finally decided to feature their first openly gay character in not just any movie, but a remake of a Disney classic.

This year’s Beauty and the Beast promises that we will see every iconic shot and dance number from the original, but now in glorious live-action. Actors whose faces we recognize will bring timeless characters to life, and sing all of the songs we loved as kids. There are a few great songs in the original movie: “Tale as Old as Time” is a classic, and “Belle” has plenty of fake French accents to try to copy, but the best scene, and the scene yours truly is anticipating the most, is “Gaston.”

Over the past few weeks, Josh Gad has systematically been chipping away at the defenses of Murder on the Orient Express co-star Daisy Ridley to try and get his hands on a few tasty Star Wars: The Last Jedi spoilers. We’ve checked in on the series three times over the past month as Gad quickly escalated his efforts, bringing in ringers such as Dame Judi Dench  —  seriously, how to say no to Judi Dench?  —  to try and guilt Ridley into letting something slip. And now, for his last-ditch effort, Gad has pulled out all the stops.

Finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for ever since Disney announced this live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast: The Gaston song. Listen, this “tale as old as time” is sweet and magical and all that other wonderful stuff, but it’s okay to admit that you’re 100 percent here for Luke Evans as the nefarious, narcissistic master of swagger, performing what is, with apologies to Angela Lansbury, the actual greatest song from Beauty and the Beast (don’t @ me).

He’s doing it again. Josh Gad has been pestering Daisy Ridley with Star Wars questions for weeks, and this time he’s enlisted the help of their fellow Murder on the Orient Express passenger Judi Dench. But Ridley is one stone-cold secret-keeper, and she’s not backing down anytime soon.

After the title of the next Star Wars movie was revealed a couple weeks ago, a veritable mountain of blog posts and articles piled up debating who “The Last Jedi” could be. Even celebrities weren’t safe from speculation fever, with Josh Gad taking the opportunity to try to ask Daisy Ridley herself what the title means. That attempt went less than smoothly, but far from being discouraged, Gad is back for another go at it.

With this week’s title reveal, Star Wars fever is back, and tons of people are weighing in on who they think “the last jedi” is. Or are. Even some of the stars who aren’t in the movie want to know the answer, and Josh Gad took it upon himself to try to find out from Daisy Ridley herself what that mysterious title means. Spoiler alert: he didn’t get an answer.