Exclusive Beauty And the Beast Interview With Luke Evans & Josh Gad #BeOurGuestEvent

Discloure – I was invited to the #BeOurGuest press event from Disney. Expenses for trip were paid by Disney but thoughts and opinions are my own.

Yesterday I shared with you our exclusive Beauty and the Beast interview with Emma Watson and Dan Stevens. Today I want to share with you a special exclusive interview with Luke Evans and Josh Gad who play Gaston and Le Fou in the Disney film that comes out in theaters this Friday!

Exclusive Beauty And the Beast Interview With Luke Evans & Josh Gad

Photo Credit: Coralie Seright

Prior to the interview I attended a special music presentation by Alan Menken. This was a great performance with Alan Menken playing some of the clips from some of the music that you will hear in the film. The performance started as a solo with Alan Menken but we were surprised when Luke Evans and Josh Gad came into the room to help sing the “Gaston” song which has been stuck in my head ever since!

Watch the special music performance with Alan Menken, Luke Evans and Josh Gad below:

When Luke Evans and Josh Gad entered the room for our interview which was shortly after the presentation we thanked these two for their performance. After seeing them together in the film, then singing together so happily you could tell that these two have great chemistry, even they agree! Here is what they had to say…

Josh Gad: The truth is, you don’t need to beg us to do a performance. Luke and I will sing at the drop of a coin. But it’s a problem, actually, that’s really – I never thought I’d be someone who was so willing to sing for no reason at all. Until I met Luke Evans.

Luke Evans: We are literally cut from the same cloth.

Josh Gad: Yeah, we are.

How did you feel when you tried on your Gaston for the first time?

Luke Evans: I’ve always said, and I always will say, because I think it – a massive part of my creation of a character, especially somebody like Gaston – the look is half of his ego. You know, the hair and the fitted red leather. You know, we went to about four or five incarnations of that leather jacket before we found the right color of blood red.

That represented the sinister part of his nature. Because I don’t know if you noticed, but that red jacket which is obviously so synonymous with Gaston in the original. And it’s the same here. That only goes on when he puts Maurice into the carriage to lock him up. And that’s the first time you see it. And we made that conscious decision. When you put something on like that, there was so much work in it, those buttons all and antlers on each button. And I had a pinky ring which was an antler impressed into red stone. It was all antler themed, as you can imagine. It looked fantastic and you put the wig on and there you go. I remember taking it off on the last day and my hair and makeup lady’s like, “Okay, well, say goodbye to the final time, see you, Gaston.” And she took it off, knowing, “Well, hello you.” And she was like, oh no. But he was a hard character to let go. I think we both felt very sad to let them go. Because we’d had so much fun and brought so much happiness to villains, it is to make people laugh.

What made you truly sign onto do this iconic movie?

Josh Gad: The money. It was one of those – no, honestly, I literally would have done this movie for nothing. It was – and the reason I signed on was because it was so iconic. And it was so – BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was my FROZEN. You know, like this was the movie I saw five times as a kid.

Luke Evans: My godchildren are very young and I’ve got lots of kids in my family, who are just a little tired of me noodling movies that they can’t watch. So the day that I got offered it, the first thing I did was text all their parents and just say to them, “I’m gonna be in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, and they can finally come to the cinema.” And they all were at the London premiere. And weirdly, they were happy but also a little sad that I was the bad guy.

Beauty and the Beast Interview with Luke Evans and Josh Gad

Photo Credit: Coralie Seright

Would you have a favorite scene in the movie?

Luke Evans: It would have to be for me, the Gaston tavern sequence. For two reasons. One, my song. Two, it was the one piece of the whole film where we got to rehearse for four to five weeks. Because it was incredibly technical. So we had all the villagers in the room. There’s vignette stories going on which you have to watch it a few times to know that, all that took a lot of time. And honestly, the music was playing throughout the whole thing. And we have to get them onto tables. And there was swords, there was murals that we have to reflect in the back of each shot. And it was a lot of stuff going on, which took time and development and collaboration and a lot of working it out. But that’s what we come from. We have come from the theater, we’re used to that rehearsal experience. And so to have that on a film, was a joy. Also we got paid.

Josh Gad: Yeah, I agree. Not to sound redundant, but it is Gaston. You know, it’s so rewarding to watch an audience now, after two years of working on this in some capacity or another. To now share it with an audience. And see the adrenaline boost that it gives the film when all of a sudden, out of nowhere this up tempo song with people dancing on the table. And you can feel the energy of the audience wanting to jump into that. And raise a glass to Gaston alongside of you. And that is the brilliance again of these Menken and Ashman songs, is they are so unbelievably addicting. And Luke and I have now been singing this song in one way or another.

LISTEN to the whole Exclusive Beauty And the Beast Interview With Luke Evans and Josh Gad below:

After the interview we took a group picture. I have to say that I was a little giddy for a moment when Luke Evans stood next to me for the group picture. This was a close group picture and I may have smelled a little his cologne once he left the room.

Other Interesting Things I Learned During The Interview:

These two love causing off screen trouble to make people laugh.
Both Luke Evans and Josh Gad came from the theater and love to sing.
Many of their on-screen interactions were improvised.
Luke and Josh were both fans of the original animated movie when they were kids.
Luke says that watching Disney movies as a kid was the highlight of his year.
It took 45 weeks to film the tavern sequence.
The biggest challenge of filming the movie for Luke was the big fight scene in the end.