Josh Gad in Sydney for the Beauty and the Beast premiere. Credit:Edwina Pickles "I think now that audiences are seeing the movie, [they're realising that] this entire thing has been so overblown." It's a valid point. With only a handful of critics and preview screenings taking place so far before the movie's worldwide roll-out starting next week, not many complainants have actually set eyes on the film. The reality is there's a couple of blink-and-you'll-miss-it innocuous in-jokes that will almost certainly go over the heads of children, and probably most adults, too. Gad says his approach to the role was about making a multi-dimensional character, beyond the slapstick buffoonery of the LeFou in Disney's 1991 animated version.

Controversy: Luke Evans as Gaston, left, with Josh Gad as LeFou in Beauty and the Beast. Credit:AP "For me, what was important was making LeFou dynamic. What was important was creating a character unlike the original, who comes out of a place of being very cartoon conceit-like where so much of the comedy comes from physical gags," he says. "I wanted to give him an arc and the way we approached it was if LeFou in the original is as dumb as a box, what if we made him dumb as a fox, meaning he's actually smarter than he lets on. Emma Watson stars as Belle and Dan Stevens as the Beast in Disney's new live-action version. "He's got pathos. He's got this wonderful moment where he questions this blind faith that he has in this person [Gaston] who's stirring up hatred. That was the important part for me in making him dynamic.

"Now that audiences are seeing the film they're agreeing that there's not much there to this story [about the gay element]. And it's just been very blown out of proportion and what I'm much more thrilled about is this theme of never judging a book by it's cover – I think that's at the core of it all and that's what I hope people take away from this film." The film imples that LeFou has a crush on Gaston. The $US160 million ($212 million) live-action extravaganza matches very closely scene-for-scene and song-for-song the 1991 film which scored $425 million at the global box-office. Emma Watson is Belle, the young girl imprisoned by the Beast who is actually a prince beset by a curse, played by Dan Stevens, among a cast rounded out by Luke Evans as Gaston, Kevin Kline, Stanley Tucci, Emma Thompson and Ewan McGregor. Josh Gad is no stranger to Sydney, having studied at NIDA in 2003. Credit:Edwina Pickles

Gad's other credits include Elder Cunningham, a lead in hit satirical musical The Book of Mormon when it opened on Broadway, and a forthcoming role in Kenneth Branagah's Murder on the Orient Express alongside Dame Judi Dench and Daisy Ridley. His most famous role to date is one that not generally he's not recognised for in a physical sense – he's the voice behind Olaf, the beloved snowman in another Disney outing, the 2013 behemoth Frozen. "It's crazy," he says. "It gets very funny because I'll be in a grocery store and I'll open my mouth and all of a sudden you'll see a three-year-old girl [going] 'What's that?' It's that look that they give you of 'Is that what I think it is?' It's such a joy." Gad says Sydney has played a large part in his success, having spent a semester here at NIDA in 2003, inspired to come because of Australian actors such as Cate Blanchett. "They all trained here and so I was like 'I've got to see what's going on'," he says. "I do credit NIDA for a lot of the success that I've had."

In terms of Aussie beer-and-pies culture he names Toohey's New as a top tipple. "I'll tell you what I did not miss and don't miss is Vegemite. If I never put that in my mouth again it will be too soon," he says. Loading "I love everything that you guys do but I don't understand the Vegemite thing. It's like eating sea water that's been cooked into a cookie." Beauty and the Beast is out in Australia on March 23.