Ty Burrell interview: ‘Modern Family has normalised gay marriage

March 27, 2014 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Actors 

Created by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, the team behind Frasier, it’s a show that is pushing television boundaries and, in its own quiet way, changing political viewpoints. Right wing conservatives, including Mitt Romney and his wife, are said to be fans and, in a recent survey, Republicans ranked the show third in a list of their top 15 shows, while Democrats didn’t rank it at all. All rather surprising, given the inclusion of a gay couple with a baby as one of the family units.

“This is probably a little overwrought, but I do actually think the writers are making the world a better place,” Burrell says earnestly. “It’s one of my favourite things about the show. I love it when I talk to conservatives and they’re describing all three couples, and they never mention that one of them is gay. That’s the brilliance of the writing. In a completely unaggressive, apolitical way, they are showing this couple as completely normal dealing with ordinary stuff. The banality of it is the most revolutionary thing.

“I think if you turned around and asked that same conservative person how they felt about gay marriage, that probably hasn’t changed for them, but the seed has been planted none the less. It’s progress and it’s the coolest thing.”

Source: The Telegraph

Ty Burrell at the New York Television Festival.

Ty Burrell at the New York Television Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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‘Modern Family’ – no time jump

July 8, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Modern Family News 

Executive producer Steven Levitan tells TV Guide the new season will open with “everybody learning about Gloria’s pregnancy.” And it’s a safe bet that Claire and Mitchell will be none too pleased to find out they’ll be getting a new brother or sister.

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Set Pieces: The houses of ‘Modern Family’

September 24, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Modern Family News 

Steve Levitan, the co-creator of the Emmy- winning comedy series “Modern Family,” didn’t have to look far to find the home of the show’s Brentwood patriarch, above.

“It actually is the house down the street from where I live,” Levitan says. “I would drive past it every day, and it looked like the modern house that so many rich, divorced older guys seem to end up in.”

How did the crew create the looks, and where does all the decor come from? You can get the full story on the houses in “Modern Family” here. LA Times also got photos galore on “Modern Family” and two other family-themed shows in their 21-picture gallery.

modern family house

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‘Modern Family’ writers want an ensemble-acting Emmy

July 23, 2010 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Crew 

The writers of “Modern Family” are exceedingly proud of the show’s 14 Emmy nominations. But if they had their way, the show would have at least one more.

Co-creator Steven Levitan and five of the show’s writer-producers sang the praises of star Ed O’Neill Monday night (July 19) at a Paley Center “Inside the Writers Room” event. According to them, O’Neill led the cast in deciding that they all should submit themselves as supporting actors or actresses — but he was the only one of the adult cast members not to score a nomination.

Read the full story on Zap2It

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Modern Family – One Of The 10 Best Sitcoms on TV Right Now

April 29, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: reviews 

Paste magazine selected the 10 best sitcoms on TV right now , and of course one of them is Modern Family. Here is what Paste had to say about the show:

The funniest debut season of a sitcom in a long while belongs to Modern Family on ABC. The story of three inter-related families works because its characters seem familiar to life but fresh to the screen. Not that the show is above archetypes: There’s the rebellious teen seduced by popularity, the beautiful Colombian second wife, the trying-too-hard-to-be-cool dad, the patriarch who doesn’t like to show affection, the flamboyantly gay boyfriend. But it’s not taken long for TV veterans Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan to let each character’s uniqueness flourish through the myriad relationships within the family.

It’s these relationships that make even a completely messed-up family a valuable thing. No matter how bad things get in this Modern Family, it always beats the alternative of not having each other. They’re flawed individuals, offering only broken bits of love to one another, but that’s more than enough to cling to. As Dylan, the boyfriend of Claire’s oldest daughter so sweetly an wisely said—before breaking into a song about Haley with the lyrics, “I just want to do you, do you” in front of the family—“You’re reaching out, trying to hold on to something awesome… Haley’s got the kind of confidence that you get from having a family like this that’s passionate and accepting of hot foreigners and gay dudes and nutty people—you know, family that actually loves each other.”

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His Home Life Is Fodder for ‘Modern Family’

April 14, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Crew 
BEVERLY HILLS, CA - FEBRUARY 26:  Executive pr...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Jewish Journal has an interview with Steven Levitan, co-creator and executive producer of ABC’s “Modern Family”. Here are some of the highlights:

In an interview, Levitan credited the success of “Modern Family” to its blending of diverse points of view. Levitan says he has “no filter” for his emotions; Lloyd, in his opinion, is reserved. Levitan believes that his own cultural sensibilities at times trickle down to the writing, while Lloyd sees no Jewish or religious sensibilities on the show.

“We certainly don’t delve into religion — second, after politics, on the list of show-killing topics – nor do we have any intention of doing so,” Lloyd wrote in an e-mail.

“One of our constant issues is, what level of fighting can these couples do?” Levitan added. He cited the remote-control argument between Claire and Phil: “They barely got into it, from my point of view, and Chris was like, ‘I think they’re too angry.’… But oftentimes, from our differences, the best [work] comes.”

Levitan, 48, acknowledges his strong cultural Jewish connection but says he is not religious. He grew up attending a Reform synagogue in suburban Chicago, where he aspired to become a writer from an early age. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, he took a job as a reporter at Madison’s ABC affiliate because “I wanted to be on TV,” he said sheepishly.

So, why aren’t any of the “Modern Family” members Jewish? Casting, Levitan said. “I don’t subscribe to the thinking that people won’t fall in love with a Jewish family,” he explained. “But when you have actors like ours, they don’t look Jewish or seem Jewish. So even if some of the humor seems Jewish, we’re not avoiding the issue to play to a mass market.”

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It’s All Relative – How ‘Modern Family’ Became TV’s Best Comedy

February 23, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Modern Family News 

California Chronicle has a story about Modern Family and its creator Steven Levitan. We really liked this quote from him:

One of the show’s strengths is that everyone has a different favorite character. “Someone will come up to me, he might be a big, burly trucker, and you think he’s going to say he likes the Ed O’Neill character. But he’ll say, ‘I really like Mitchell,’” the gay character played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson. “And I’ll think, I did not expect that from you. I get that all the time.”

Here is another important news:
Levitan and Lloyd will do 24 episodes this season, and then age the family naturally for next season. After producing iconic series like “Frasier,” which ran for 12 seasons, the prospect of doing the same with “Modern Family” is daunting, to say the least.

“It makes us feel like we’re at the base of K-2,” Levitan says. “We’re just trying to make it to the next destination. I think the show has legs, but we’re going to take it one season at a time.”

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“Modern Family” creator Steven Levitan talks about gay couple Mitchell and Cameron on hit comedy

December 19, 2009 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Crew, Modern Family News 

As the gay marriage debate continues to rage in the United States, two gay dads played by Jesse Tyler Fergusonand Eric Stonestreet on ABC’s hit comedy Modern Family could be doing a lot to change hearts and minds.

Greg in Hollywood has an interview with “Modern Family” creator Steven Levitan that talks about this subject. Here are some of the interview highlights:

“I think once people watch the show, those are two characters who are very, very hard not to like and I think that has probably diffused any of the negative energy that people were feeling”.

“We haven’t had much pushback on it,” Levitan said. “There’s always a fringe element that before the show came out, you know, ‘let’s boycott ABC,” and it was probably like 20 guys in a cellar someplace.

Said Levitan: “We have an episode that will air in January in which Jay is with a bunch of his buddies and he runs into Cameron and he introduces him as a friend of my son and Mitchell takes great offense at that. And through dealing with that issue, I think they come to a better understanding. It’s a very funny episode that’s really about something.”

Ferguson is an openly gay actor who previously played a straight character on the CBS comedy The Class while Stonestreet is straight and among his many roles was a recurring part on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

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Familiar Faces in Fresh Formulas

December 17, 2009 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Modern Family News 

What seemed in early fall a rare outbreak of inspired television writing has in recent months become something rarer—not an epidemic, exactly, but a season impressively stocked with creations drenched in wit and enterprise, all unmistakably reflective of a drive toward formula busting. These things are, of course, always relative. In television these days, one quality hit a season—especially in the impossibly snare-infested comedy genre—seems a lot; two is like breaking the bank.

Yet we’re now finishing a television year that has seen both the emergence of ABC’s uproarious“Modern Family” and its less dazzling but wonderfully mordant lead-in, “The Middle,” about another kind of modern family—a brew of consistent charm and character with a bracing hint of nightmarish reality underlying its sitcom fun. Add to these the most unexpected gem of all—NBC’s “Community,” a satire set in the unlikely precincts of a community college. Its creator, Dan Harmon, was, by his own account, inspired by the semester he once spent at one in pursuit of an effort to strengthen ties with his girlfriend. That relationship didn’t work out in the end, but, happily, the same can’t be said of this whip-smart series about an improbably compelling band of adults taking classes at a sunny academic hell called Greendale Community College.

These were comedies that lit out for new territory and that delivered, at least, persuasive approximations thereof. Of none was this truer than that creation of old “Frasier” hands Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, “Modern Family”—a hugely ambitious, hilarious and royally self-assured enterprise involving three family-connected couples. So seductive are each of these portraits, it’s become clear as the series runs on, that the show’s only problem is finding a way to fit all of them, and their delectable situations, into a satisfying share of what is, after all, only a half-hour format.

Read the Full story on the WSJ.

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First-year show creators, producers hope for Golden Globe nomination

December 2, 2009 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Modern Family News 

“Modern Family,” “Glee,” “Community” and “The Good Wife” are some of the breakout shows that could get a nod.

It’s no wonder the Golden Globes have a reputation for being more fun than the rather stately affairs that usually bring out Hollywood’s A-list. After all, broadcasting live from the Beverly Hilton on Jan. 17 and keeping the Champagne flowing is bound to loosen things up. But the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.’s biggest night is also known for being ahead of the curve when it comes to honoring first-season TV shows — partly because of being the first TV-related ceremony of the calendar year and partly because of its envelope-pushing attitude.

This season offers a ballroom full of potentials that could strike the fancy of the HFPA’s 83 voting members — among them “Modern Family,” “FlashForward” and “The Good Wife.”

On the comedy side, ABC’s “Modern Family” seems to have put a spring in the steps of critics. Although executive producers Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd are modest about the show’s success, Levitan is happy for the recognition. “One of the reasons that it might be striking a chord is because there’s a sense of optimism,” Levitan says. “We don’t try to dodge emotion.”

Lloyd, who went to many an Emmy ceremony during his years on “Frasier,” says that seeing the show nominated as a whole would be a thrill. “There are lots of individual awards that come and go, and they’re wonderful, but they can have the effect of making people feel just a bit left out. Because [the Globe] recognizes everybody who works on the show, that’s one that you can really rally behind.”

Read the full story at LA Times.

Modern Family

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