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Jesse Tyler Ferguson is reflecting on the criticism he received from gay Modern Family viewers.
The 49-year-old actor, who played Mitchell Pritchett on the beloved ABC sitcom, opened up on the July 9 episode of the Dinner’s on Me with Jesse Tyler Ferguson podcast about the feedback the gay community gave him about his character during the show’s 11-season run from 2009 to 2020.
“One of the pressures I’ve always felt, specifically after being on a show like Modern Family, where I’m portraying a gay man on a television show on a network that is as popular as it is,” he began. “You receive criticism, as you do with anything you do, but the criticism that I think I heard the loudest was always from the gay community.”
Ferguson said the feedback, as he took it, was that “maybe I didn’t represent their idea of what a gay relationship was, or a gay man was.”
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Ferguson explained that he always took this criticism “with such a grain of salt.”
“I’m representing one person,” he reasoned. “I’m in charge of this one character.”
While Ferguson felt that his Modern Family character wasn’t supposed to represent all gay men, it did represent someone he knew: himself.
The actor said he viewed Mitchell as “a shade of who I was” and joked, “If it’s stereotypical, I’m basically playing myself, so, I guess, guilty as charged.”
Despite criticism from some, Modern Family earned lots of praise during its run.
The series was a hit with viewers and won two GLAAD Media Awards for its everyday depiction of a gay couple on primetime TV.
Not only that, but Ferguson and his onscreen love interest, Eric Stonestreet, who played Mitchell’s husband Cameron Tucker, both received Emmy nominations for their work.
While Ferguson received five Emmy nominations but never won, Stonestreet won two Emmys out of three nominations.
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Ferguson previously opened up about how playing Mitchell helped make people more accepting of his sexuality and shift in the way they perceived him.
During an August 2024 episode of Dinner’s on Me, Ferguson said playing Mitchell on the small screen felt empowering in a way.
“There was some weird superpower that I felt like I was being protected by this role that I was also playing,” he said at the time.
“It kind of gave me this coat of armor, and I had this protection of being this character that people also loved,” he continued. “I don’t know. It was really weird.”
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Modern Family is streaming in full on Hulu.
