Watch Beauty and the Beast on Star Movies Select HD on 24th March 2018 at 9pm respectively!
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Please tell us more about your character in the film?
Josh Gad: I play the character of LeFou in the Beauty and the Beast. LeFou gives the sidekicks to the film and is sort of a main antagonist in the film. Luke Evans plays as Gaston and these two are sort of coming back from a war and Gaston is a very centric figure in the country in this French village and LeFou is almost a historian celebrating his legacy and almost there to remind the public how important his contributions were.
What I wanted to do was that this character is not a carbon copy of the character that's there in the original movie, because the original movie it's a cartoon so you can get away with broad comedy. He gets knocked out, burnt and thrown and there is a lot of physical comedy that I don't think translates this version of the film so it was about figure out of how we change it and make it more human, and that came with a question of conscious for me. That's where it started.
With so many LIVE action movies in the pipeline, what do you think of Disney's new phase where these classic are presented to a new audience in a new way?
Josh Gad: I feel that there is a second golden age for of Disney animated films of a mermaid to the Lion King which includes Beauty and the Beasts in the Latin day. It's such a favourite part of my child and I think that the big part of the reason of why those movies worked is so instantaneously classic, I mean you can't leave the theatre without those songs becoming immediately iconic and a part of your musical vocabulary. When those songs came out whether "Be Our Guest" "Under The Sea" or "Gaston" you would sing them. I remember going to school and everybody would be singing and humming the songs. To be a part of a legacy like that, if you won that's impressive but for Menken and Ashman to have produced at least three of the most iconic scores of all times, I think it's a great accomplishment of the film.
What do you think of Bill?
The beauty is that it's openly intended because Bill is a very intimate director, so many of his films have an intimacy to them that is that begins with the character and builds around that so to do a big temple like this using incredible sets and this epic wonderment that comes with this. To have somebody like Bill Condan who grounds it all with amazing flashed up characters intimate moments and makes sure that the audience leaves with emotional response, that's everything to him and that leaves with very impressive fusion of big spectacles and having that emotional response that movie like this wants.
Tell us more about your journey while making the film.
Josh Gad: I said to Bill what if it's not as curtain dry as it's in the original film, what if he does have questions, this idea forces ideology, false worship, what does it look like in this particular guy as he is admired for all these years without questioning is doing things he has to bring into question, that creates for conflicts and that creates three dimensions of the lives of these character. All of us here before kind of camera started rolling, usually rehearsal process of the film it ranges between 2 weeks or a few days. Beauty and the Beast was not one of them, it was an exception, we got here a month before and immediately in musical piece we were in rehearsal space in our sweat pants and we were choreographed by brilliant Anthony, he did an amazing job of creating these iconic songs from the scratch and giving us inputs into that process so with the song like "Gaston" beforehand that we got into the room is for discovery and coming from musical theatre myself and book coming together of fusion of two of my passion, doing musical theatre and doing film song for the camera was a very amazing journey.
Is there any particular sequence or scene that you loved from the film and the challenges while doing it?
Josh Gad: The opening number, such a great opening number it tells you everything about the religion and Belle's village. To me that was so fun for different reasons because it's complete opposite of Gaston. We recreated this entire French village in the backyard, all of these moving parts along with the hundred actors in the background, have to be in sink, walk around in an incredibly vast space and doing it in a manner that's precise. Coming in on horses which is not my forte, it all just melted beautifully and it just looks beautiful. And Emma of course who is gonna surprise so many people with her beautiful voice and playing the character like some other character that she has played captures the tone of the film immediately when you see her. I think it sets up the film beautifully. Yeah so the mob song, it involved a lot of torturous and again so many things taking place in different sequences. It starts of in a village this mob building up and walking up the castle gates. It's really much out of the water.
Tell us more about your co-actor Luke Evans?
Josh Gad: I have always been a fan of Luke from his actions and from all the things I have seen from fast and furious. What surprised me too much was two things that he genuinely has the funniest sense of humour I have ever seen and that comes easily to him. When the camera is on, you can't imagine another person playing Gaston, you just can't. And what blew me away was his voice and he has got this voice. From the beginning he and I got along and just getting our rhythm together. And it's about two people who have been in each other's lives and unrequired love and the other one has his eyes on different prize and that's what made the relationship so fun and so delicious to do because of sense of one of them is so obsessed with the other and the other has no regard for what that person is feeling. Working with him has been the real pleasure of the show.
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