Modern Family’s Eric Stonestreet :: playing gay, and making people laugh
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 Edge’s Jim Halterman 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.
Surprised by success
EDGE: 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.
EDGE: 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.
