Jesse Tyler Ferguson says Modern Family criticism was 'loudest' from the gay community

The complaints were coming from inside the house!

Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson is considered a TV trailblazer in the LGBTQ+ community. As Mitchell Pritchett on ABC's mega-hit sitcom, he was one of the few out gay actors playing a major gay character on a mainstream show at the time. When the show ended, he was one of the most beloved gay TV dads of all time. He says that wasn't always the case.

On Ferguson's Dinner's On Me podcast, he opened up to guest Russell Tovey about the criticisms he faced while filming the show, and how they often came from his own community.

"One of the pressures I’ve always felt, specifically after being on a show like Modern Family, where I’m portraying a gay man on a television show on (a) network that is as popular as it is, is that you receive criticism, as you do with anything you do,” he said, according to CNN.

Ferguson then noted that "the criticism that I think I heard at the loudest was always from the gay community."

He said some fans felt "as if maybe I didn't represent their idea of what a gay relationship was or a gay man was, which I always took with such a grain of salt because I'm representing one person, I'm in charge of this one character."

Modern Family was nominated for 85 Emmys and won 22 in its 11-season run from 2009 to 2020. Ferguson was nominated for five consecutive Emmys for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

The queer impact of Modern Family is still being felt today, as one of the show's actors, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, recently used a famous line from the show to come out as bisexual to her TikTok followers.

In the video, Anderson-Emmons lip syncs over the audio from a scene where her character Lily Tucker-Pritchett insists she's gay because her two adoptive fathers are, writing, "people keep joking so much abt me being gay when I literally am (I'm bi)."