When one thinks about Josh Gad, one typically thinks about animated snowmen or possibly Broadway’s Book of Mormon before thinking about his experience with stunt work. Still, he’s been a part of plenty of action sequences in movies ranging from Murder On The Orient Express to Beauty and the Beast and now Artemis Fowl. It was a scene from that second movie that he most fondly remembers because it basically tricked everyone who watched the movie.
In Beauty and the Beast’s live action film from Disney, Josh Gad plays LeFou opposite Luke Evans’ Gaston. The two have a famous musical number together in a pub in which Gaston shows off and lifts a barmaid with one hand and LeFou with his other hand carrying them around. Josh Gad revealed on the set of Artemis Fowl that he thought it was clear wires were involved during the "Gaston" performance.
However, once he was actually on the press tour for Beauty and the Beast it became clear the movie magic had really worked. People thought Luke Evans was literally so ripped he could lift Josh Gad one-handed, which cracks Gad up to this day. He told CinemaBlend and other reporters:
My favorite experience so far doing harness work and wire work was actually Beauty and the Beast. There’s that scene where Gaston sort of lifts me up in the song and it was so, when we did it, I was laughing at how so absurd it was. Then the first place we went on our international tour was China and everybody in the room like looked at Luke and goes, ‘How did you lift Josh with one hand?’ I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ Then, we kept going to cities and everywhere we went everybody’s like, ‘How did you do that?’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, wow, this is incredible.’ It always feels bulky, it always feels awkward when you’re doing it, but then the way that they can sell it just makes it all come to life.
You can see the lift below. What do you think: Does it sell Luke Evans as having Wolverine-like strength and dexterity? (I can make that comparison now, because the X-Men are finally part of Disney.)
Josh Gad is actually fairly experienced with the harness. Still, it’s not always super fun in the moment performing scenes like the lift during Beauty and the Beast’s “Gaston” musical number. This time around, there was one pro to doing stunt work for his most recent movie, Disney+’s Artemis Fowl. In the case of this latest film, Gad's costume was rather bulky. So unlike his other Disney flick, it made it much easier to hide the gear.
Sadly, Luke Evans was not around to lift him this time around. However, Josh Gad does play a well-liked literary character in the adaptation of the Eoin Colfer books named Mulch Diggums, a kleptomaniac dwarf character who has wild hair and is in the middle of some of the action in Artemis Fowl. The movie is available on Disney+ streaming as of this weekend.
