Jesse Tyler Ferguson felt 'an incredible amount of pressure' to represent the LGBTQ+ communit...

Ferguson opened up about hearing &34;a lot of noise&34; as the only gay actor in the sitcom's groundbreaking gay couple. Jesse Tyler Ferguson felt 'an incredible amount of pressure' to represent the LGBTQ&43; community on Modern Family Ferguson opened up about hearing &34;a lot of noise&34; as the only gay actor in the sitcom's groundbreaking gay couple. By Ryan Coleman :maxbytes(150000):stripicc()/RyanColemanauthorphoto0081ce8f0254478080f35972c433877b.jpg) Ryan Coleman Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

Ferguson opened up about hearing "a lot of noise" as the only gay actor in the sitcom's groundbreaking gay couple.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson felt 'an incredible amount of pressure' to represent the LGBTQ+ community on Modern Family

Ferguson opened up about hearing "a lot of noise" as the only gay actor in the sitcom's groundbreaking gay couple.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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on March 12, 2026 5:23 p.m. ET

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Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet on 'Modern Family'. Credit:

Gilles Mingasson/ABC via Getty

- Jesse Tyler Ferguson is revisiting the "pressure" he felt to properly represent the LGBTQ+ community on *Modern Family*.

- "I felt an immense amount of pressure as the gay cast member" in the show's gay relationship, opposite Eric Stonestreet, who is straight, Ferguson detailed on *StraightioLab*.

- Ferguson also shared that he felt "an incredible amount of pressure from the gay community specifically" to get things right.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson still takes the responsibility of representing LGBTQ+ life to a mainstream audience on *Modern Family* seriously.

The actor debuted his gay character, Mitchell Pritchett, on the groundbreaking sitcom nearly 17 years ago. But on Tuesday's episode of the *StraightioLab** *podcast, Ferguson recalled the "pressure" of the role as if it were yesterday.

"I felt an immense amount of pressure [for] several reasons," he explained to hosts George Civeris and Sam Taggart. Chief among them: Of the two actors who played the show's gay couple, Mitch and Cam, only Ferguson is gay.

"Eric Stonestreet [is] straight," he explained of his co-star and onscreen husband. "I felt an immense amount of pressure as the gay cast member, but also, as part of this couple on network television. It's like... the golden doors had been opened to us, and we were able to enter people's living rooms and show them what a gay couple was."

The expectations placed upon Ferguson to play Mitchell in a way that reflected positively on perceptions of gay love and life didn't come from Ferguson alone. The actor said he felt "an incredible amount of pressure from the gay community specifically" to get things right.

Though he conceded that "mostly I've had nothing but a lot of support from the LGBTQ+ community," he did recall "a lot of noise about how we weren't doing things right or we weren't representing what certain people thought we should be representing."

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For example, "one of the things I do remember was that they were upset, and I actually kind of agree with the LGBTQ+ community about this, [that] Mitch and Cam weren't showing a ton of affection."

Indeed, by just the second season of the show, some viewers and critics began to point to the lack of PDA between Mitch and Cam, especially when compared to the show's other (straight) couples, Claire and Phil (Julie Bowen and Ty Burrell) and Gloria and Jay (Sofía Vergara and Ed O'Neill).

That all led up to the season 2 episode "The Kiss," which played with audience expectations of a Mitch-Cam kiss, which did happen in the background, but actually explored the lack of affection between Mitch and his dad, Jay.

"I loved the way that the writers dealt with it," Ferguson explained. "We had these other kind of hyper-sexualized couples... Jay and Gloria were having their whole thing going on... but I kind of liked that this couple that on paper you would think would be the most sexualized because they're gay, weren't. They were kind of the boring couple. I liked that."

The cast of 'Modern Family'.

Bob D'Amico/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty

Ferguson has previously opened up about being one of the few gay actors on network television at the time, or ever, to shoulder the burden of queer representation.

On a 2025 episode of his *Dinner's On Me *podcast, Ferguson shared that in terms of critiques of *Modern Family*'s gay characters "the loudest was always from the gay community." Many felt that Mitch "didn't represent their idea of what a gay relationship was, or a gay man was," the actor said.

As for Stonestreet, Ferguson has detailed his costar's practice of checking in that his own representation of a community he does not belong to didn't tip over into objectionable territory. "He would always kind of check in with me to make sure he's on the right track," Ferguson explained in 2023. "Finally I was like, 'You need to stop doing that 'cause you're doing a really great job.'"

You can listen to Ferguson's full appearance on the *StraightioLab *podcast above.

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Source: "EW Comedy"

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Source: Comedy

Published: March 13, 2026 at 07:57AM on Source: RED MAG

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