In bringing Beauty and the Beast to a more contemporary world, one of the most notable changes made within this universe is through the character of La Fou, played by Josh Gad. Considered by many to be Disney’s first openly gay character, when we spoke to Luke Evans, who plays the aforementioned character’s love interest Gaston (the film’s principle villain) we asked about the Welsh actor about this particular dynamic.

Evans also spoke with us about the joys, and challenges, in portraying a Disney villain on screen, and why he feels that Emma Watson is the perfect choice to take on the eponymous role of Belle. He also speaks about the impact Disney can have through the medium of cinema, and the balancing act in portraying a role who at times is at humorous as he is nefarious.

It’s one thing to play a bad guy in a a thriller, but another in a fairytale – are you prepared for the fact that children around the world will be afraid of you?

Yes, I’ve thought of this, how they will run from me on the high street. But this is what is so great about Gaston, there’s a likeability about him, as much as he is a very well-written Disney villain, there’s a sense of charm about him and he’s actually quite funny. Well, you laugh at him.

Is it more interesting to play a villain?

Yeah, because I’m not a bad guy in real life, so in a way you have to play something that is completely against everything that you stand for, and Gaston really is, in every sense of the word, nothing like me. But you have to relish that and throw yourself into it. I want to do the role justice, and doing a villain like Gaston justice is to absolutely become the biggest buffoon and idiot you can be. To be as dislikable and sinister as you can by the end of the movie, so it was very enjoyable, very, very fun.

Was it a challenge getting that balance right between honouring the animated villain from the original, and now making him more of a human being?

It was a challenge of sorts, it’s something that was quite clear very early on when Bill Condon and I spoke about Gaston very early and spoke about how we would change him slightly. Obviously the physicality was going to change immediately, just like La Fou, who is like a two foot creature I’m not even sure is human. Gaston is a strangely shaped giant of a man, so the physicality of him was different. Personality wise, well, when you take an animated character and put it into human form, a human face can relay so much more by doing almost nothing. A face tells so much, and my face tells a lot, and so a lot of it came naturally and the script was so brilliant and he has some ridiculous lines and you just have to deliver them with a completely deadpan face and allow the audience to find it funny. When you try very little with Gaston, that’s when the real humour and humanity came out in him.

He’s very likeable and also very dislikable, it’s a strange thing to play both in one character in one film. You either want an audience to love you or hate you, but this character has both in equal measure. A lot of people noticed he becomes a lot more sinister and darker by the end of the film and I think we played on the fact he is a hero of sorts, he was a captain in the army and saved the village from this past invasion. The period in which they existed was quite a tumultuous time in France, and in Britain and many other places around the world, so he was able to exercise his heroic abilities and fighting techniques. He was a strong man and he did prove himself, except we’ve all been reminded of it every day since and it’s a little boring. That’s basically the biggest difference, humanising him but also giving him a real arc. Although I saw it immediately when I watched the animation, I saw this man go from a loveable buffoon of the village to this incredibly dark, sinister, murderous character.

Is there something particularly French about Gaston?

You’re trying to get me into trouble here? Are you trying to say the French are arrogant, that they like looking at themselves in the mirror? [Laughs] I don’t know, I travel very often and I think the traits in all o the characters in the movie are recognisable, some for the better, and other traits, like you see in Gaston and the Beast when you first meet him, this cantankerous angry creature you see in people and walk the other way – I think every culture has these people, you either let them into your lives or you keep them far away, and with Gaston, the personality he portrays is an arrogant, narcissistic egotist who doesn’t really respect women, thinks he can have what he wants and won’t be told no, and thrives on an ego that in unnaturally big and everyone is below him, and that arrogance is a very dangerous trait.

And he uses it to manipulate a crowd of people, who go along with stories and get carried away as he plays on their fear, he’s clever in a way, he uses this reputation he has to manipulate people who don’t really know what the Beast is and he fuels their fear. We see this, I mean, I don’t want to get political, but it’s very clear who Gaston represents right now in today’s climate and it’s fascinating to see it in a Disney movie, that we filmed two years ago. That’s the wonderful thing about Disney, they push buttons and are thought-provoking, and it’s an interesting theme that runs through Gaston’s character.

BEAUTY AND THE BEASTIs this relationship with the real world what makes Disney a phenomenon?

Yeah, it’s funny, they’re fairytales, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, a lot about love conquering all and how evil never wins, although it can succeed for quite a period of time in this film, and through animation Disney have managed through the decades to deliver messages to the younger audience that are often difficult to explain by adults, and they’ve done an extremely good job at that. Granted, I think before Beauty and the Beast and Belle, it was very much the woman is the one to be saved, she has to look pretty and stay at home and cook for 12 dwarves and fall asleep gracefully and wait for the heroic Prince to kiss her and save her from an eternal live of snoring, and then came Belle, who even in animated version, is a forward-thinking, clever, intelligent, well-read young woman, and she knows this small provincial town is not the borders of her life and she’s not scared to think she wants to see the great outdoors, and that’s a nice thing because it shows ambition and belief in one’s self.

Whether you are a young girl or young boy, you can have a dream and you can attain it. She’s presented with many questions in her young life about sacrificing her life for her father’s, that’s an incredible thing, she’s a hero. A young role model for young girls and the way Emma portrays her is wonderful. She saves the Prince, she’s the hero of the day.

So was Emma the perfect choice for this part?

I think so, she has a voice. Emma has a very clear vision of what she wanted to portray in the character of Belle, and so in our scenes she didn’t want to come across as a push-over, or like Gaston could force her to become his wife, she was very strong, Belle wasn’t scared to make Gaston feel very insecure. It didn’t work, but she has that strength of character, and it was very nice to see Emma using her ideas as a very independent, forward-thinking, high-profile young woman who has expressed her opinions on women’s rights across the world, and on equality, in this Disney character. It’s subtle, and clever, we’re not pushing it down someone’s throat, but while she might be in a gold dress, she might as well be in gold armour at some points because she is so feisty and strong. It’s a lovely thing.

Do we need more female heroes on screen?

Always, always. They always look so much better than the men anyway, don’t they? But we have one coming out in Wonder Woman, which is wonderful. There should be equal amounts of both. It doesn’t mean that the female heroes should be for the women in the world, and the male heroes for the men – they should cross-over. Mass appeal comes from both sexes. But I think we’re seeing more, and just having this conversation about the leading character of a movie I am in being the hero shows, and this is Disney, who have always been about the Princess, in the dress, with her golden slippers and the dashing Prince who saves the day, that’s not this story, this is very different. I think it is changing. We have a long way to go, but the fact we talk about it is one of the great aspects. This is all coming from the chauvinistic pig of the film, times are changing!

On the subject of progression – there’s a one-way romantic narrative between yourself and La Fou – when did that come into this? Was in in the screenplay, because it felt like the sort of thing Josh Gad could’ve brought in himself.

I think it was something that Josh and Bill talked about. But I look at Gaston and La Fou like two kids, and one is like the leader of the gang and the other is an underdog, but he’s banging his feet and he knows if he stands in the shadow of this giant man, the stardust will brush off onto him at some point. I don’t think he knows why he’s enamoured with this man. But they need each other, they’re in a symbiotic relationship in a way. Gaston needs La Fou to back him up and remind the villagers of how heroic he was 20 years ago and that he’s a big fish in a little pond, to validate his position in this village and to massage his ego.

They work symbiotically with each other. What happens with La Fou is anyone’s guess, he’s just obsessed with being around Gaston, he’s his right-hand man and nobody is going to get near him. Maybe there is a moment where La Fou thinks that maybe he’ll be able to change Gaston. He’s definitely the most reimagined character in the whole film, he has a thought process that we see, he’s aware that as much as he blindly follows Gaston and admires him for so many things, he can also see this man is not making the right choices in life sometimes, and La Fou realises he’s not the person he’s admired for all these years.

Beauty and the Beast is released on March 17th and you can read our review here.