Ewan McGregor is shutting down those who’ve expressed outrage over a gay character in Disney’s live-action remake “Beauty and the Beast.”
“He’s a gay character — it’s 2017, for f—- sake!” the actor, who voices Lumiere in the film, said during his appearance to promote the film on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Monday.
“There is a lot of gay sex in it,” he joked. “There is a lot of gay sex in this cartoon. If you live anywhere near Alabama, you should not go see this film. What would Jesus think?”
Of course, McGregor was referring to an Alabama theater that decided to pull its scheduled screenings of Disney’s live-action “Beauty and the Beast” remake because of the film’s inclusion of a “homosexual character.”
The theater’s decision came after director Bill Condon told Attitude Magazine that “Beauty and the Beast” would feature an “exclusively gay moment” involving Josh Gad’s character, LeFou, the buddy of vain villain Gaston (Luke Evans).
“LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston,” Condon told the magazine. “He’s confused about what he wants. It’s somebody who’s just realizing that he has these feelings. And Josh makes something really subtle and delicious out of it. And that’s what has its payoff at the end, which I don’t want to give away. But it is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie.”
Due to the “exclusively gay moment,” Russia gave the film an age restriction although it initially proposed a ban in the country, and the movie was shelved in Malaysia although a cut of a gay scene had been approved.
During McGregor’s visit, he also told Colbert that he has never seen the 1991 original “Beauty and the Beast,” but this actually helped him prepare for the role of Lumiere given that he could really make the character his own.
Watch the clip above.