Jesse Tyler Ferguson reveals how a Modern Family press photo made him angry

On a new episode of the Dinners on Me podcast, hosted by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, he looks back at a Modern Family press photo that made him angry. His revelation takes us to the first season of Modern Family, in which Jesse Tyler Ferguson played Mitchell Pritchett. After he was displeased with the picture chosen for the press tour, Jesse had successfully gotten it changed.

Jesse first explained the context of the image to Ty Burrell, who played Phil Dunphy on Modern Family. He said,

"I actually got my picture changed... So, Phil was the obviously cool dad, so he had headphones and was doing the rock and roll. Haley had her cell phone that she was busy on. Sarah was putting on lipstick. And me and Eric, because we had a line about cream puffs in the pilot. So it was us holding a cream puff."

Tyler Burrell understands that the reason that a specific picture was chosen was probably a result of the habit of stereotyping. He says,

"Well, they're gay."

Ferguson agrees, trying to say that is exactly what the image was trying to portray,

"They're gay... And we had a line about cream puffs in the pilot."

"Oh, god,"

Burrell replies in between.

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Why Did a Modern Family Press Photo Make Jesse Tyler Ferguson Angry?

Jesse explains the incident when he did not like a Modern Family press photo. He continues to explain,

"And me, on maybe, like, the last shot of a series that we were taking, decided to do a really insane face of, like, 'Isn't this wild? I'm a wacky gay man.' And that's the photo that they chose and used on all these posters, and it ended up in Times Square."

Oftentimes, homosexual characters become victims of alleged stereotyping in the entertainment industry. They are usually portrayed as eccentric and dramatic. When Jesse Tyler Ferguson felt the same might be happening to him, he decided to make some changes.

As Jesse continues to narrate the incident to Burrell,

"But then I actually was successful in getting them to change it. I said, 'Can we find any photo anywhere? It could be of me in seventh grade … where my face is just calm. Just a nice, like, loose smile."

He stood up for himself in a very professional way,

"What I leaned into, I was like, 'Listen. I'm playing a gay character on network television. I'm really proud of this relationship that they have. It's a committed couple. We're meeting them in the first scenes of, you know, like, they're adopting a child. Like, can we just pick the photo where I don't look like I'm doing a cliché?"

Jesse Tyler Ferguson and the entire cast of Modern Family received a lot of love from fans when the show aired from 2009 to 2020. Even though the show is over, the cast is still very close to one another. Jesse Tyler Ferguson often invites his former co-stars on his podcast to talk about life and their experiences.

New Dinners on Me episodes come out every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Audible.

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