Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet
Ironically, two of the most buzzed about (and successful) new shows on the television landscape this fall have featured regular, front-and-center characters who happen to be gay – Fox’s Glee and ABC’s Modern Family. On the former, Kurt (played by Chris Colfer) is a glee club member who is adjusting to being a gay teen in high school as well as at home with his macho father. On the latter, which is a half-hour sitcom about the three households of an extended family, gay Dads Mitchell and Cameron (played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet) are not only in a long term relationship but have also embarked on parenthood by adopting baby Lily. After interviewing Ferguson in September just as the show was premiering, it was time for me to chat one-on-one with Stonestreet, who talked about the sudden attention that he’s living with now, playing gay as Cameron as well as the show’s intentions with portraying two gay men raising a child.
Stonestreet's real life clown past inspired next week's storyline.
Jim Halterman: How are you getting used to all the attention that the show is getting and, more importantly, that you’re getting?
Eric Stonestreet: The one thing I was taken by surprise by was how fast it was. We were on one week and it went from people looking at me and thinking they saw me somewhere or I went to school with them to now people definitely quickly know me as Cameron from Modern Family, which is amazing and I was pretty blown away by how fast it works.
JH: Some of your real-life clown history is going into next week’s episode so does that make you leery about talking to the writers about your life because it could end up as a storyline?
ES: What’s great about this show and sort of what we’re all very much excited about is it gives us the opportunity for real life to imitate art. We want the show to be real and accessible and relatable to everybody. Doesn’t every family have some kid that wanted to be a clown when they were growing up? Isn’t that the norm? I don’t know. I have no clue. I think the writers are very, very open to hearing our stories and I think they’ll share that with America and our audience as much as we seem willing but I think we have a unique opportunity to make our show very funny because we’re all unique individuals.
Ferguson, Stonestreet with co-star Ed O'Neill
JH: When taking on the role of Cameron, how did you and the producers decide how to portray the level of ‘gayness’ the characters should have?
ES: Jesse is gay and I’m straight but for us together it was important for us from different perspectives. His, obviously, from the gay perspective and mine obviously from the straight/accepting perspective. The goal, I think, is to make the fact that these guys are gay be down the list of who they are as people, which will be super helpful in the long term because our goal is to make a comedy and make people laugh. Obviously somebody is going to say ‘Oh my God! That’s so stereotypical’ and somebody else is going to say ‘Oh! That’s so not stereotypical.’ Our goal is to just be funny and bring interesting, relatable, likeable, passionate, funny characters to the screen and let people glom, grab or grasp onto whatever they respond to and I think if people see Cameron and Mitchell as people who have known each other long enough and have been in this relationship for the long-haul and to see that it is just that, a relationship just like any man-woman relationship, any woman-woman relationship, any relationship…the better it is for people whose minds need to be opened up to the fact that anybody can raise a child if you give the child love.
JH: Are people assuming you are Cameron?
ES: [laughs] When you meet me I think it’s pretty clear that I’m pretty different from Cameron but we’ve had conversations about that. I don’t care if people think I’m gay. People ask me all the time ‘Aren’t you worried about people thinking you’re gay?’ If I was worried about that I wouldn’t be doing the character. There are actors that may not want to do this character for that reason but I don’t happen to be one of them. I joke around and say that I was more worried that people would think I was a killer because I killed three people on TV last year. [laughs]
JH: Does the fact that the show was a hit right out of the gate take the pressure off or does it add more pressure to keep the momentum going?
ES: That’s a good question. For us, I think the writers and producers do such a good job of sort of fielding the brunt of any pressure that comes along with that and that’s when you really thank your lucky stars. Steve Levitan and Chris Lloyd, who are in charge, have been down this road many times on varying degrees with successes with shows – they’ve had critical hits, public hits, critical failures, public failures – they both run the gamut of television so just to have those guys in charge takes the pressure off of us as a cast because we know they are such perfectionists and so good at their job that we really are able to show up everyday and just deliver the performances that we’re all trying to deliver that America deserves to see and justify people’s love for the show.
“Modern Family” airs a new episode every Wednesday night at 9/8c on ABC and tonight the series will also re-air an episode at 8/7c.
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Jim Halterman spends his days interviewing the top tier of talent and creative forces in the television world and then, because he's that kind of guy, he brings it all to YOU! And, because we all like free stuff, check back often for giveaways!! 
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