Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson on the Upcoming Story Line That Moved Him to Tears
Jesse Tyler Ferguson almost missed out on Modern Family, ABC’s breakout mockumentary that is already being heralded by the Hollywood Reporter as one of the best series of the decade. Recovering from his experience on the critically savaged and quickly canceled Do Not Disturb, Ferguson told his managers that he was finished with television and moved to New York last year to headline the Broadway musical based on Elf. Fortunately for Ferguson, his managers soft-sold him Modern Family, which the actor read five times over and fell in love with. Now, Ferguson can be seen on Wednesday nights as Mitchell Pritchett, the hilariously straight-laced former figure skater who has since settled down with his flamboyant partner — the hilarious Eric Stonestreet — and their adopted Vietnamese daughter.
Movieline has an interview with Jesse, and here are some of the Q&A:
I heard that you also initially auditioned for the role of Cameron. How far were you in the audition process before realizing you were a better fit for Mitchell?
It was literally the first audition, and I had been desperate to play Mitchell. I feel like I had probably played Cameron before and it didn’t seem terribly challenging for me. I just felt it was more of a challenge to find the humor in his seriousness and his uptightness. And then the first audition with Chris and Steve, they said, “Oh you’d make a great Mitchell too. Why don’t you come back in and audition for that part?” And I said, “Well that’s what I’ve been telling people for weeks and no one has been listening!”
There is a lot of tension between certain characters on the show, especially between Julie Bowen’s and Sofia Vergara’s characters, that has extended into certain press interviews with the actresses. Is that tension real, are people afraid of them on set?
It’s completely not. We all have this amazing, kind of unruly sense of humor. Sofia and Julie have this hilarious dynamic between the two of them. They go out to dinner and they are very good friends but they make fun of each other all the time. When that whole thing happened with theChelsea Lately show, it was funny, because that is just how the two would be interacting to each other’s face. But people with too much time on their hands in front of their computers suddenly created this controversy between the two of them [Ed. note: Those people are so pathetic!], but they were laughing about it together. So there’s no tension between the two of them.
Can you tell us anything about the rest of the season — any big surprises or dance numbers?
[Laughs] Yeah, we adopt another baby. Just kidding. Can you imagine? There’s this great episode that actually really hit close to the heart for me. We deal with my dad’s uncomfortability with my character’s sexuality. Ed O’Neill’s character ends up introducing Cameron to his friends as “a friend of my son, Mitchell’s.” And I get really upset about it, naturally and say, “You would never introduce Phil as a friend of Claire’s.” It kind of opens up this can of worms between him and me and how much support he really offers me. It ends up being very moving and very touching. Obviously, through the eyes of Chris Lloyd and Steve Levitan and the writer of that episode, it is handled with such care and humor. It actually made me tear up when I read it. Especially in this era of marriage equality, it gave a simple, clear voice to a father and his son. And by the end of the episode, I think it might take a step towards changing a lot of people’s minds on marriage and equality and how they view people that are different from them.
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Jay and Gloria’s House from “Modern Family”
I am not a stalker found Jay and Gloria’s house filming location. Here is some information that they found:
Jay and Gloria’s ultra-unique home is MUCH bigger in person than it appears to be on Modern Family. For some reason, the establishing shots shown on the series only feature one angle of the residence. In reality, though, the home has a whole other half which has never appeared on TV. The house is so massive, in fact, that I couldn’t get all of if to fit in my camera lens, but you can sort of get an idea of its true size in the above photograph. According to Zillow, the residence boasts five bedrooms, six bathrooms, and a whopping 6,359 square feet!
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Top 10 Shows of 2009: The Best, and the Rest
Yet another top 10 shows list this time from the Time and of course Modern Family is in the top:
1. Mad Men
2. Modern Family
3. Breaking Bad
4. Big Love
5. Battlestar Galactica
6. Lost
7. Friday Night Lights
8. Glee
9. Sons of Anarchy
10. The Office / Parks and Recreation (tie)
Read more: in the Time
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Sneak Peeks – Modern Family Episode 10 (1.10) “Undeck the Halls”
CHRISTMAS CHEER IS A LITTLE MIXED AS EACH HOUSEHOLD GETS READY FOR THE HOLIDAYS, ON ABC’S “MODERN FAMILY”
Guest starring Fred Willard (“Best in Show,” “Waiting for Guffman”) as Phil’s dad.
“Undeck the Halls” – Christmas is in full swing at the Dunphy house until the kids get in some trouble and Phil and Claire threaten to take away Christmas until one of them fesses up. Meanwhile, Jay struggles with wanting to stick to his holiday traditions while Gloria and Manny want to incorporate some of their Colombian practices, and Mitchell and Cameron take Lily to the mall for her first picture with Santa — but end up with a disgruntled mall Santa on their hands — on “Modern Family,” WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9 (9:00-9:30 p.m., ET), on the ABC Television Network.
“Modern Family” stars Ed O’Neill as Jay Pritchett, Julie Bowen as Claire Dunphy, Ty Burrell as Phil Dunphy, Sofía Vergara as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, Jesse Tyler Ferguson as Mitchell Pritchett, Eric Stonestreet as Cameron, Sarah Hyland as Haley Dunphy, Nolan Gould as Luke Dunphy, Ariel Winter as Alex Dunphy and Rico Rodriguez as Manny Delgado.
Guest cast include Fred Willard as Phil’s dad, Brian T. Finney as Scott and Jeremy Scott Johnson as Andrew.
Read more: 3 Sneak Peeks – Modern Family 1.10 “Undeck the Halls” « TVOvermind
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Modern Family’s Rico Rodriguez
We love Manny!
Sarah Hyland: The Worst Commercial Ever
Girl2Watch, the site that connects Actresses and Entertainment in Social Media has chosen Sarah Hyland as this week’s Girl2Watch!
Here is what Sarah thinks is her worst commercial Ever:
I did this PSA where I was a soccer player, and my friend makes the winning goal and then she’s blown up by a land mine. It never made television because they ran it on the internet first to see what people thought, and it was way too disturbing to put on television. In the audition there wasn’t many lines, but they started having me do different types of screams. So you would literally have to stand there and have to pretend to watch something and go,“Woo yeah, she just made a goal” and you would be jumping up and down and screaming. And then they’re like, “We say ‘Boom!’and then you start screaming and start crying and stuff like that.” And this is like a commercial audition. Usually for commercials you’re like, “5 dollar foot long” and stuff like that. I thought it was just going to be like some regular audition, and I go and end up having to start screaming and acting like someone was just blow up in front of me, and it was my best friend.
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Introducing Sarah Hyland From Modern Family
Girl2Watch, the site that connects Actresses and Entertainment in Social Media has chosen Sarah Hyland as this week’s Girl2Watch!
“I’ve always been very outspoken,” says Sarah Hyland in a gross understatement. From a family of actors, nineteen year-old Sarah currently stars as fifteen year-old Haley Dunphy in ABC’s smash-hit comedy Modern Family. From her first role as Howard Stern’s daughter in Private Parts thirteen years ago to her recent stint as Brooke Shields’ daughter on Lipstick Jungle, Sarah has been a riding a steady wave of acting success. A recent transplant from NYC to Hollywood, Sarah still exudes a distinctly East Coast attitude and edge. A gifted storyteller and conversationalist with a keen sense of irony, she’s not afraid to speak her mind and let you know exactly how she feels about things. She also has some wildly eclectic music tastes, and her idea of a perfect day involves watching Sunday football on the couch. This is one Girl2Watch you’d have a blast chilling, hanging out, and shooting the breeze with.
See more of Sarah Hyland’s pictures at Girl2Watch.
Year’s best TV: ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Modern Family’
MSNBC says “Modern Family” is one of the year’s best TV shows:
Three households, all unconventional, are blended into this fall’s freshest family comedy. Ed O’Neill and Julie Bowen are among the stars perched on this sitcom family tree.
See the rest of the top shows here.
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Q&A – ED O’NEILL from “Modern Family”
- Image via Wikipedia
Ed O’Neill was a hardworking 41-year-old character actor when, in 1987, he was cast as Al Bundy on the Fox TV series Married . . .With Children. The raunchy but hilarious show, featuring the most dysfunctional family on television, lasted 11 seasons and made O’Neill a star. Since then, the likable actor has had a busy TV career, popping up on The West Wing, 8 Simple Rules, John From Cincinnati and as detective Joe Friday in a 2003 remake of Dragnet.
O’Neill, 63, has hit pay dirt again, playing Jay Pritchett, patriarch of the hit ABC series Modern Family. O’Neill was interviewed to dispach.com, here are some of the Q&A:
Q: Modern Family was a hit from the day it made its debut. What attracted you to the project?
A: I liked the fact that there were no jokes, that it was story-driven. I liked the interconnectedness, yet the separateness, of the three families; and I thought there was a lot of room for comedic situations. I liked that it was so ensemble. That’s my theater background.
Q: Your character is an older, successful guy married to Gloria, a Colombian hottie (Sofia Vergara) with a precocious 10-year-old son, Manny (Rico Rodriguez).
One of the things that makes Jay endearing is that he’s really trying to be a father to Manny, right?
A: The fact he wasn’t the greatest dad the first time around, I think a regret is there.
Now that he’s got another chance, even though I think Manny was not part of the bargain originally, now that he’s got him, he’s enjoying it. He’s basically a good guy, anyway.
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Sofia Vergara heats up ABC’s ‘Modern Family’ and makes us laugh
The Times interviewed Vergara at Urth Caffe in Beverly Hills in October, where the Colombian actress proved why she might be on her way to becoming America’s No. 1 funny lady. The following are excerpts from that interview. You can read the rest here.
Fess up. Who’s your friend at ABC? They keep giving you opportunities.
My friend or my friend? (Laughs.) I think [ABC President of Entertainment] Steve McPherson. He always said, “I’m going to look for something for you.” He always believed in me. All of the three shows that I’ve done has been his idea.
How did you meet him?
I met him when he was at Touchstone. I did a pilot with Damon Wayans for ABC. And he was one of the executives. The pilot didn’t go through, but they tested the pilot and I scored pretty high. I don’t know what that means. Then ABC gave me a holding deal until they found something for me. And now it looks like they found it.
Did you have fun at work today?
It’s always funny. Today we were working on the Christmas episode. So today we sang a song.
Do you crack up around Ty Burrell? He’s so funny.
It’s so hard to be straight around him. But you learn because then the hours are too long. That scene we had where I throw the underwear at him, we had to do it so many times because I would throw it on his face and I would just laugh and laugh.
You named your son after Manolo [Steven Bauer] on “Scarface,” right?
I was so obsessed with Steven Bauer. He was so handsome. He was gorgeous. But now my son always says, “Yeah, yeah, you named me after a drug dealer junkie. That’s fantastic, Mom.” I tell him, “It was because he was handsome.” That’s my favorite movie. [She looks down at her plate.] It’s a weird time to be eating this salad. 4 p.m.?
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Going to a wedding?
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