Director Dan Scanlon wishes LGBTQ character had bigger presence in Onward

Onward director Dan Scanlon wished Disney's first-ever LGBTQ character had a much bigger presence in his movie.

In the Disney and Pixar animated adventure, Chris Pratt and Tom Holland voice two elf brothers who set out on a quest to use a magical spell to bring back their late father for one day.

During their road trip, they encounter a Cyclops cop called Officer Specter, voiced by Lena Waithe, who makes a brief appearance in one scene, as she tells them during a traffic stop: "My girlfriend's daughter got me pulling my hair out".

Director Scanlon, who also helmed the 2013 Pixar animation Monsters University, previously said he wanted Onward to "represent the modern world", and in a new interview with Yahoo Movies U.K., he confessed he wished Waithe's character had a much larger part in the movie.

"After we recorded her, we wished we had expanded (the role). Lena Waithe is not only a great actress but a great writer and she improvises and was just such a joy to work with," he shared.

Last month, the Master of None star shared that she was to voice Disney/Pixar's first-ever LGBTQ character in a post on Instagram, prompting a flurry of supportive comments from her celebrity friends.

"As. It. Should. Be," Evan Rachel Wood wrote, Ava DuVernay posted, "Go, Lena!" and Cynthia Erivo added, "Go on and make herstory!!! Why Not!!!!"

Onward producer Kori Rae previously told Yahoo Entertainment that the inclusion of the character "just kind of happened" when the fantasy was being written.

"The scene, when we wrote it, was kind of fitting and it opens up the world a little bit, and that's what we wanted," she said.