Jesse Tyler Ferguson's dad questioned why he played 'so many gay parts'

Yahoo

15-05-2025

Jesse Tyler Ferguson's dad "didn't understand" why he played "so many gay parts." The 49-year-old actor - who is best known for playing Mitchell Pritchett, who was married to Cam Tucker (Eric Stonestreet) in 'Modern Family' - welcomed his father's questioning because it led to a "whole other level" of their relationship because he was able to explain how important he felt to advocate for same-sex relationships on screen. Speaking on his 'Dinner's On Me' podcast, he said: "My family, they went through their own process with me being gay. "And my dad even asked me, while I was doing 'Modern Family', he's like, 'I just don't always understand why you have played so many gay parts.' "And it opened up a whole conversation between the two of us and started a whole other level of our relationship, because I had to sort of explain to him why it was important for me to play this role, because, socially, I wanted to be able to portray a gay man on television. I felt like it was gonna do wonderful things for the marriage equality movement, which it did." Jesse also noted the "tricky" balancing act of sharing personal anecdotes to connect with fans and not intruding too much on his family's personal lives. Speaking to his guest, actor Luke Macfarlane, he said: "I'm sure your parents were the same way. You know, their careers didn't beg for us to be so open with [themselves]. "And even I'm still learning how to open up in ways. I still have to keep parts of myself private. "We're expected in this industry to go on talk shows and talk about our personal life and to, you know, expose parts of ourselves for roles. And it's something that I think for my dad specifically...it's still a hard thing for him to understand. "If I go on a talk show and tell a story about the family, it's like, 'Why did you have to share that?' And I was like, 'Well, because it's a charming story about my life, and I'm just sharing a little bit of myself with people who wanna know something about me." The 'Cocaine Bear' actor - who is married to Justin Mikita - previously told of how he'd had to tell his parents he was gay at 17, 19, and 21 before they fully understood his sexuality. He told talk show host Oprah Winfrey in 2013: "The last was, he asked me if I had a girlfriend. I was like, 'Dad! I'm gay. Do we really have to go back to this every time?' "It was a process for him as well. It was sort of a coming-out process, and he had to figure out how to deal with having a son that wasn't the ideal son. He had this whole idea of what his son was gonna be, and he had to reconfigure his thinking."