Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson

Published Jun 26, 2023, 4:01 AM

On this episode of Hello Isaac, Isaac Mizrahi talks with Jesse Tyler Ferguson about imposter syndrome, gay marriage, saving a high school musical’s production and so much more.

Follow Hello Isaac on @helloisaacpodcast on Instagram and TikTok and catch up with Jesse Tyler Ferguson on Instagram @jessetyler.

All the actors whom playing these rules for the first time are seated together. We all barely know one another. And oftentimes you do these table reads for these people and they say that one doesn't work and I reached right.

People lose their.

Jobs and somehow you're just excited.

That's nice. I guess you're just not Jewish. You're really you don't have a Jewish gene in your.

Body, Darling.

This is Hello Isaac, my podcast about the idea of success and how failure affects it. I'm Isaac Musrati, and in this episode I talk to Tony Award winner and Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson. Let's get into it. Jesse Tyler Ferguson is a fascinating guy because at.

The same time that he's a huge TV.

Star, he's also a big Broadway and stage star, and the two are quite different, and I'm not sure what he likes better, and I want to talk to a little bit about that. The reason I absolutely adore him is because I've known him for so long. Him and his adorable, darling sweet husband named Justin Makita. I was at their wedding.

How about that? Okay?

But let's get back to Jesse. You know, sometimes when you get very famous, it's hard to keep this intense human perspective, and it's hard to be friends with people other than your immediate immediate inner group. And every time I see Jesse he is so friendly and so amiable and so darling. I have to say, not only is he an amazing actor on so many levels, but he's great at a lot of things, especially cooking. I think he loves eating more than he loves acting. I mean it, he likes eating and he loves to cook. But I think especially he's just good at being a human being and listening and being a friend. So let's sit down and talk to Jesse Tyler Ferguson. Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Hi, bye, Darling. You know, first of all, you look cute. I'm not getting your hair looks good. And I like that shirt. Is that like Jack purse or something?

What is it?

I think it's rag and bone.

Actually it looks good on you.

Really, it's definitely a shirt I stole from my family.

So listen, I'm going to start us off with this question that I sometimes pose to people. Surprise me, Darling, tell me something surprising about you. For instance, what do you think about at night before you fall asleep or something, or what would you be other than you know who you are? Can you think it's something off the top.

Of your head.

I'm terrible at technology, and I'm fortunate to be married to someone who's ten years younger than me who helps me with all that. Me too, just really bad at it. In fact, one of the reasons I was five minutes late to this phone call is like every step of the way I was like, oh, I don't.

Know how to do that. Oh, I don't know how to do that or that or that.

And I guess I'm not that surprising that someone who's approaching fifty is terrible technology.

Well, I got to tell you.

As it gets more and more sophisticated, I get worse and worse at it, and I keep thinking to myself, well, guess what, I'm just not going to do it. If I can't figure out how to do this, they're gonna have to deal with the fact that I am having an hour off today. I'm not kidding. I get very nasty about it because it's horrible. It's really hard to deal with.

I get so frustrated with my parents. I'm obviously person who is helping them out with things. I can't even imagine what they must be thinking right now. Like I'm starting a podcast myself, I don't know how my family's going to listen to it.

I don't have to explain it to them.

You're going to just have to go there and perform the whole thing for it.

That's right, that's right.

So wait a minute, So Tyler's a middle name, right.

Yet there was already a Jesse Ferguson in the Union.

Ah wow, okay, and that is a working actor, Darling. Let's take our hats off to Jesse Ferguson. He's still working, he's still paying his dues, and he's still working.

Though I wish that Jessie Ferguson, I've never met him. I don't know what he's doing. I don't know what his credit card.

You know what, if I was really great at podcasting, I would get my phone out and go, guess who we have on the other line, Yeah, the other Jesseifer. Now, Darling, so tell me about how you got started. You are not from New York or Los Angeles, New Mexico, New Mexico. Come on, what brought you to this illustrious career, Like where'd you go first? New York or La?

I went to New York. I was a theater kid.

I was that kid growing up who wasn't listening to Madonna in the eighties, wasn't listening to Prince and Boy George. I was listening to a Phantom of the Opera and Lenda's rob and Avida and Miss Saigon in my bedroom in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I was obsessed with musical theater. And when I was a junior in high school, I went on this trip with my local community theater, the Albuquerque Civic Light Opera, and they did an annual trip to New York. And now having been a performer in New York, I know what these trips are. It's the bus of older set of blue hairs that come in for the matinee shows and the group tours. And so I was part of one of those tours. I was the youngest on this trip by thirty years.

Wow, that is so all these like old people and this one like gay how old?

Fifteen year old?

Exactly right?

Razy, Yeah, that's fabulous, Just that is really good.

I was in the French program, and we had a French exchange student stay with us for the entire summer. My parents could either pay for me to go to France for a summer to stay with them, because you know, it was an exchange.

Program we hosted one summer.

I could go then the next summer, or I could go to New York City for like six days.

Now, of course, in hindsight, i'd be like, we'll take the trip to France.

I don't know, Darling, I'm not so sure about that.

But I had never been to New York and I just know I wanted to go, so me, as you know, a sixteen year old kid, I said, I choose New York. And I went with this group of older mostly ladies, and we saw.

Something like six shows in four days.

You know, you'd see a mattinee and an evening, and of course it was like all the big touristy things like fam of the Opera. We saw the Guys and Dolls with Nathan Lane and Faith in Mind, and I think there was like a tour Radio City Music Hall as well, and I played hooky from that and I went to go see instead a show that I had seen on the Tony Awards, like the nineteen ninety three Tony Awards at home that I was obsessed with called Falsettos.

Oh, come on, really.

William Falsettos.

So it wasn't on the docket of things to see because it was a musical sort of ahead of its time. A man dying, leaving his family just because he was gay. He met his lover, he decides to move in with his lover, he ends up contracting HIV, turns to a passes away. It's very heavy, it's very funny as well. In a lot of ways, it's very emotional.

It's a beautiful show.

It's a beautiful show. And I had seen a clip of it on the Tony Awards, like I want to see that show. But of course it wasn't part of this trip from Albuquerque in Mexico. That was a little too much for you in the.

Blue right for the ladies. That was your first time in the theater.

It was my very first Broadway show.

It's so fabulous. I'm not kidding. I go to the theater like a lot, many many nights a month. I go to the theater and I still love it. And I have to tell you, I like hating a show. I love leaving in the middle of a show. It's my favorite thing to do dinner early. What's better than that? When going home and you're in bed for the Golden Girls block on Hallmark.

It's the best anyway.

So, Darling, I want to talk for a minute about your breaking into show business.

Did you go to Julliard? Did you go to acting school? What happened?

So after I went to that trip with the Blue Hairs, I had my first taste of New York City and I was like, I have to get back to that city. So it was just imperative that I got into New York and so I auditioned for a few different theater programs, but only one that was actually in New York City, called the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. I was, I think too scared to audition for NYU and Julliard, and I just felt like I wasn't ready for that, And so I chose a school that was a little cheaper and more affordable for my parents, but also in the city and seem to have a really great track record. A lot of great people had gone their time, daily had gone there come on, and so I got into the American Musical and Dramatic Academy AMDAS as it's called. It's a two year program. You get a certificate of completion when it's done. It's not even like a degree.

So that was my training.

You know what I want to talk about for a second, because this is a really really good thing to talk to you about. I bet the process of rejection and auditions. Did you go on a lot of auditions at the beginning? Had did you have an agent?

What happened?

Well, there was a showcase at my school, and so I did get an agent from that.

But it's so funny.

I remember his name was William Shill and he had that I don't know if you ever saw lost in the ankers, but there was the ant she would talk and then she would have.

Just kept talking. Was like, it's where she hat.

He kind of had that thing, and I remember him telling me at one point he did think I was very talented. But one of the reasons he wanted to work with me was because he didn't have any red heads.

Ah, I didn't have.

Any redheads, so he really wanted to red right and so that was the reason he chose me basically, And I he was, you know, not a high power agent, but he would submit me for things, and I went out for a lot of stuff. A lot of the advice I got from teachers was just get as much experience as possible. I don't know if i'd give that advice now to actors, because I was auditioning for things that I was just wildly inappropriate for, and frankly I was wasting people's time. But I was going for the experience and going to like just experience auditioning and like, you know, it's a muscle.

Well, what's wrong with that, darling, There's nothing wrong.

I was auditioning for, like once on this island, things that I would never you know.

Except guess what. I went to performing or at high school as a kid.

And literally, Darling, I did like King Lear when I was like fifteen. I mean, if you could do that at fifteen, you could do any fucking thing, you know.

So I'm serious.

You can audition for in the Heights or something or whatever it is the church completely never going to get and still stand there and do the song some courage. Are you good at rejection? Are you good at people telling you we're going to go with different direction?

Jesse. I didn't know with the other Jesse Ferguson for this.

Yeah, oh my god, came imagine. I am really good at it. Now.

It's so interesting because my husband, Justin, who I love, has gotten into producing. LEVI of course you love Justin, who doesn't He's gotten into producing. He's sort of inched the show biz business now, and he's had to deal with a lot of projects that he's shepherded and sort of crumbling and falling apart. And granted he's behind the camera right now, it's different to have a rejection as an actor because literally saying we don't want you right now, there could be lots of reasons why they don't want you with a project that you're trying to get off the ground. From a producing standpoint, it's less about you and more about the climate of the industry. But he has had to sort of figure out how to have a thick skin. And it's not something you just develop overnight. I've spent twenty five years developing it.

You know, Isaac. My first show in New York was you might have seen it. It was on the town see it?

Excuse me, I feel like I remember meeting I saw it Darling we met because I kind of knew Leah a little bit.

Yeah, I was going to say that was my first big rejection, well not rejection, disappointment, you know, that show into the transferring to Broadway and then doing not great on Broadway and closing after three months, and it felt so big and so heavy, and I was so depressed, and it was just the first of so many times I was going to be disappointed, and I really learned, Okay, there's always something more. It's going to take resilience, you know. Being this business is not easy. It's why people always say, if like, you have anything else that you want to do, please do it or that, because it's a really hard business and I'm really good at it now and I just don't get excited about things until they actually are real.

And season two, by the way, that has to be like season two or three for me to be excited.

But it's something I've learned.

And so I am rejection now and because I don't take it personally, obviously, there's things that come across that I desperately want and they don't happen for me, and devastating, but you know, I can manage much better now.

Than I did at twenty one.

Well, I saw you in a play that Paul Rudnick wrote called something Marvelous, A marvelous story or something like that.

The most fabulous story ever told.

Where you appeared completely naked.

And let's just say that, mister Justin Mkita has nothing to complain about. Like one two when I think about actors or dating actors, because I've dated actors, and I'm so amazed at how these people can wait, like I want this to happen, Let's go make this work, make it a and like these beautiful men that I did are just incredible actors. They have this inner think. I think it's about auditioning and being able to take rejection and being able to wait. Did you have a long wait before you gotten your biggest break? What's your biggest break?

There's definitely ten poles in my career. On the Town was definitely a hue huge break for me because it gave me confidence. I was twenty one years old and George sea Wolf, who was one.

Of the top director's greatest, supposed.

Me to be in this very important production of On the Town that Combinent and haight Off Green were so alive for.

They were part of this experience.

It was a big revival in New York City, and I got to play the role that Frank Sinatra played in the movie.

Like that is huge.

Then I didn't really have another sort of moment until I was doing this musical in New York called the twenty fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, ironically just for a little full circle moment, directed and written by the same people who directed and wrote Falsettos.

My first Broadway show is that great. Yes, life has giving me a few of those moments, and we.

Do love the full circle moment, which we.

Do love a full circle moment. So that was a big thing for me. But you know, in terms of great success and being able to like not worry about money and having doors open to me in a way that like other opportunity was coming to me in a way that I hadn't before. My career was definitely modern family. All these things that happened before that were stepping stones to get me there.

I wouldn't be.

Anywhere without all those other things, those other opportunities.

Along the way.

Right, you said, this really smart thing that made me feel better about my life because by the way, Darling, you know, a performer and an actor trapped inside the body of like a fashion personality.

You're not trapped. You're on Broadway, no doubt. I know, I know.

But here's the thing.

It's like, I always think, when am I going to be on Modern When am I going to get my version of modern Family? But I think you're right about this. It's like, you better find some other stuff you like to do. And I know you have a million things you like to do, which we'll talk about a little bit later. I kind of want to stay on this thing about failure. Can you think of something that happened to you that you thought originally was a huge setback but then became this kind of turning point in your life that just turned things around.

Well, I mean, there's obviously lots of like musicals and plays and stuff that I desperately loved and the audiences weren't there for them, or the critics weren't there for them, and they kind of fizzled. But the big thing for me, and this is the thing that brought me to Los Angeles. So not only was it something that failed, but it was the catalyst for me moving across the country. When I was doing Spelling Be. The producers and writers of the show called The Class saw me in Spelling Bee and had me auditioned for this sitcom that James Burrows was directing.

James Burrows directing Cheers and.

Darks Will Friends Everything, very prolific director. And it was written by David Crane who was one of the co writers called creators of Friends, and David Cleric, who was one of the co creators of Matt About You. So all these people were coming together to create this new show and it was the script that.

Every actor was desperate to audition for.

And I got a role on it, and I was flown to Los Angeles. It's test for it. I got the part. I went to LA for the first time. It was a great cast, Lizzie Kaplan, Jason Ritter, John Burnenthal, Lucy Punch, Heather goldenhursh fantastic company. And it was meant to be the big show of the year, great promo like CBS rolled it out.

But can you remember, Darling, I seem to remember the Class.

And James Burrows actually flew us on the CBS private jet to Vegas the night before at premiere because he did this for the cast of Friends and the cast of Will and Grace. He took them all out the night before the show and said, say goodbye to your anonymity. Tomorrow's gonna be a different thing. The show's going to hit. It's be a huge hit. Your lives are going to change forever. The show was canceled after eighteen episodes.

Well at least you've got a speedball and some hookers in La the night before, you know, I.

Mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wait no, So that was this thing where you.

What wildly at the point, I mean, I've literally had James Burrows, who created only Hit Television, telling me that my life was going to change when the show hit. Now Branton, it did in a lot of ways because I was on television and I actually did premiere very very well, but then the audiences were falling off and the writers were sort of scrambling and restructuring the show and trying to save it, and then that it wasn't and it was heartbreaking watching the singer the show of the year just sort of crumble, and I had moved my life across the country to be in this show. Just it was disappointing on so many levels, just because I felt like, how do you possibly get a shot bigger than this?

We all know what happened afterwards, we all got Modern Family.

Right after the class failed and was canceled, the two thousand and eight writers strike happened. So like I was in in LA deciding to sort of stick it out, and it was one hundred days of.

Just nothing in the industry.

Wow.

So it was a period of my life where it was just total upheaval, Like one am I doing.

I'm trying to stick out this new life in Los Angeles because I'm already here. I like bought things, I moved my clothes over here, like I just try it for a little while.

And it was just really really disappointing.

And I thought, you know, if the James Burrows sitcom's not going to work out, but this whole TV thing might not be good for me. Like I said at the beginning of our discussion, was such a theater kid. So I was very happy to go back to New York and just do theater. But I was really bummed out that something that I was really excited about kind of this new chapter of my life was not working out.

It was hard and how did it turn you around. What did you get from it?

Well, the writer's strike was nothing. I waited it out.

But then the next season there was some pilots that I was being sent out for, and it was helpful that I had just been on a show people know you.

I got great reviews on the show.

You know, we all like were praise, all the actors were praised, like we came out smelling great. But I ended up getting a show that I kind of felt like I had to take because I was sort of desperate for money and I didn't have a great contract on that first show I got because I didn't have any sort of quote, so they were getting me for a dime, and so I felt like I needed to take this other opportunity.

And it was a script that I didn't love, starring some people I liked.

Nissi Nash was in it, Jerry O'Connell, I mean, it was great, great cast.

Baby Franco who is James Franko's little brother.

And it was actually written by Abraham Higginbotham, who was a dear friend of mine who ended up writing on Modern Family and winning like five Inmmy Awards. At at the time, it was his first show that he was show running, and it just did not work out. It was really not good. It was the first show canceled of the season. No, I was like, I'm in a bad place, right. I was really ready to move back to New York and just sort of call it a day. And then the next pilot season was the year that Modern Family came out, and that script was since to me. So I went from the show that was the first show canceled of the season. The show was called Do Not Disturb. And then the next season, I'm on the show that wins the Emmy Award.

From Best Unbelievable. You know what's funny.

I shot a pilot a million years ago with some really good people, also Judith Light and Maria Bellows and amazing people. But we shot this pilot and I remember they had an exclusive contract, like they paid me anyway, even though it didn't get picked up, and they kept the right. So I think, what is up happening is they get that you're good on TV and they're like, hm, even though this sucked, We're going to find something for Jesse Ferguson or Jesse.

Tyler Ferguson, Right, Yeah, And then what's.

So great is that you ended up playing something not exactly close to who you are, but you played a gay.

Person for a change.

And I wanted to go back for a minute because we were talking about On the Town, right, and you and Leah two of the biggest homosexuals I think I've ever met in my entire life playing you know, the biggest straight Well she killed I can cook too, she killed that number. And it's about a straight lady like dating men, right, And it's hilarious to me to think that Leah Delaria is doing that tune, this revival of On the Town and you played a fucking straight sailor out there, horny looking for pussy, you know, I mean, so was that strange?

Was that fun? What was it, Darla?

Because today you don't really do that, you don't cast that way.

How is George woolfirsu Leo was cast first? Who really wanted to give her that opportunity? You know, it's so funny.

I think it was between Lea Delaria and get Ready for This and so Billy Porter, well you see like maybe it's a man in drag and so I think it got like maybe a little nervous about that and he was like, what's like a female version of like that?

Like kind of like we are black man right exactly.

And it was such a blessed experience. I mean, I guess I was playing straight. I didn't think about it too much because it was just like an opportunity for me, Like I wasn't thinking I had to push up. I mean, you can watch this on YouTube if you searched Lee Delaria at the Rosio o'donald show. I can cook too. There is the clip of us performing on the Rosi o' donald show. And let me tell you, anyone with two eyes is going to be like homofxtuals.

We were just having a great time.

But the thing, Isaac, I remember all the reviews were saying about what Greek chemistry we had. You really believe that these two people adored each other and there was energy and something crackling between the two of them.

I was also a bean pole.

I was maybe one hundred and twenty five hours, yes, and Leah was you know, short and sout, and we were just a funny pair. Yes, we looked funny together and it just worked. It reminded me a little bit of Nathan Lane and Faith Prince and guys and.

Doll Yes, it just worked.

Yeah, And it was all George Wolf giving us that base.

But I mean, just talk to me for a minute.

I did an interview a long time ago, like about two or three years ago with this incredible ballet dancer James Whiteside.

You know James Whiteside.

He's an AB and he's a principal dancer, major major, major star. And he talked about those years doing princes every single night of his life, you know, supposed to be kind of attracted to swans and fairies and princesses, and he said it wasn't so easy being this gay person stepping into these heteronormative roles.

You know.

I looked into it a little bit and ended up like there's a lot of people who disagree with this kind of casting, Like you don't cast a straight person to play a gay part. You don't cast a gay person to play a horny sailor out on lead.

You know.

But for one thing, if you don't want to be a prince in ballet, like, you don't have a.

Career, right. So for an actor, isn't it exciting to act?

It's thrilling?

I mean, I was just having this conversation with another friend of mine who's an outday actor, and I get asked this question a lot of you know, should gay men be playing straight parts? Should straight men be playing gay roles. It's a discussion that we're all having right now, and I think it's really important that we're having it. I am personally still working through my feelings about it. I am going to say that as an actor, I want opportunity to play people that are not just gay. I know I wouldn't take a role of a trans person. I wouldn't take a role of a disabled person because I feel like there are actors in those communities who are really good and they're emerging now because they are being slowly given opportunity.

MJ.

Rodriguez is a perfect example. Ali Stoker has won a Tony Award for Oklahoma. She's an amazing musical theater.

Act and the great Things ever. Would you do, Stanley Kowalski, I'm not kidding, would you?

I don't know I.

Would play that role because I don't know if I feel comfortable and that I would play it. Hamlet Okay, well it might be a little too old for that now, but I don't think Stanley is in me.

I don't think anyone wants to see me. Frank Stanley, Well.

I kind of want to see you. Want blanch is what I want to do. But more importantly, I saw you do Shakespeare. I forgot what play it was. It was in the park. I've done five and by the way, I've been to the fucking Delacort Theater about a thousand times in my life. But for some reason, I know Mercury was in retrograde that summer when you were playing, and it took me three times. I was like, Jesse, where the fuck is this theater? And I was like, in the park calling your agent. I don't know if you remember this, and I.

Remember was it the Comedy of Error?

It was the Tempest? It was the Tempest. I ended up finally the third time finding it. But is there a play, whether it's Shakespeare or some classic play that you would like to do?

What role do you have your own?

It's so interesting because Take Me Out was something that was never on my radar and then it ended up being in the most profound experience of my life and giving me a Tony Award. I just feel like I'm not great at imagining things for myself. I have done a production of Midsummer Night's Dream. It was the first Shakespeare that I did in the park. I did it on the town at the Delacorth Theater. But the actual first Shakespeare I did at the Delacourth Theater was a Midsummer Night's Dream. I played Francis Flute, but I would love to go back and play Bottom.

I think I'm too old for Hamlet.

No you, darling, Yes, come on, this was like the nineteen forties or something. You would be just starting out as Yeah, seriously, I've.

Gotten very lucky. I've got to do a lot of the Shakespeare roles I wanted to do. I did both of the Dromeos and Comedy of Ear amazing for parts, which was really fun. As far as the classics, geez, I don't know. I mean, I've seen so many of them done so well. I just don't know what I would add to them. But I love working on new material, honestly, Isaac, you.

Know, I like this thing that you're saying because I have this conversation with the divine Allan coming and he said this incredible thing to me, and I couldn't believe what I was hearing it was so inspiring. He said, you know, I don't really strive. I don't strive. And I was like, wow, Alan, And for a minute I was like, that's lazy. Come on, Alan, strive and he was like, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. If I'm striving for something, I won't see what the universe, yeah, has already prepared for me.

And I was like what.

And you know he is one hundred percent right about that, And so maybe you're right, darling. Maybe someone is out there going. I think Jesse Tyler Ferguson would be this incredible hamblet.

I'm not kidding, baby.

It is how it will take me out. Happened.

When I got that phone call, I was like, oh, is it for the skipper or the coach? Like, no, it's for Mason Marzak, which is you know, the role at dinnis o Hair when a Tony worked for Like, oh god no. And I knew that at the time that Sean Hayes had been workshopping. I was like, oh, Sean Hayes is doing that. Like, no, there's a scheduling conflict, you can't do it. I was like, Oh my goodness, this is crazy. It's like at the universe totally surprised me with that one.

Completely unbelievable.

Okay, so let me ask you this, Because I suffer from extreme stage fright, do you.

I always get nervous before I go out. The adrenaline seems to lift me out of that.

So you don't go down this whole black hole where you're like in a room going there's absolutely no way I can go out there, and then you just brace yourself because that's what happens to me. I literally I'm standing there and there's a stage manager who literally has to like push me. And then you know, I work with Liza a lot, so I learned, darling. When you enter, unless you go like hey everybody, you know they're going to eat you alive, so you have to pretend.

And then the minute you get.

Out, it's a whole other situation. All of that folds away. You don't feel that, you don't get terrible, terrible stage fright.

I do not get that. I do have nightmares about that.

I have terrible nightmares that I'm being asked to do, like is always Shakespeare in my nightmares, and I do something I don't know the script at all. So that's the reoccurring nightmare that I have. When I was doing Take Me Out. My good friend Patrick Adams, who is in the second stage production of it, he has terrible stage fright, to the point where I think he did a play at one point that he like literally had to stop the play and like leave the stage and I had to get ushered.

Back on stage.

So he really was very terrified to do this role and Take Me Out, where it was a lot of direct address to the audience, a lot of big monologues.

So I was working very closely with someone who.

Had intense stage fright every night, and I watched him work through it, and like he would come off stage sometimes saying I felt like I was having a panic attack. On stage, I saw a wide light, I was dizzy. I got through that, I was like, wow, I don't know what that feels like.

Well, you're really really lucky.

But I don't know where I read this just recently it said that you have imposter syndrome or something.

Yes, I suffer from that.

What is that tell me about that?

Just feeling like you know you're not gonna be good at something. It's usually always something new. The thing about being an actor is like every role is something new, Like every job, you're starting from the ground up. And granted I have a lot of experience and like, I know what it feels like to try and develop a character, but every character is a brand new thing and you're starting from scratch. And I always feel like this is gonna be the time that I can't figure this out.

This is gonna be the time where people I hate what I'm doing.

But you know, I started this podcast and they're all with people I admire very much and love very much. But every time I start, I'm like, oh God, like I'm not gonna be good at this. This is gonna be the one where I don't what to say. I'm going to totally blank. This person who I admire and love is gonna be staring at me wondering when the next question is coming up. I don't know, It's just I feel though, I feel like that stress in that anxiety propels me to be better though.

And now you're Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

You're like a brand name. People know that you can do stuff. You know, forget about acting. We know you connect, but you can also do this other stuff. You wrote book, your very big personality in the food scenes. But I want to go back a little bit to like the first table read or something of Modern Family or something. Were you very nervous that day? What did you tell yourself to get through that well?

I mean I was excited for that day, Mitchell.

Modern Family was so close to who I was, right and I had such great auditions. I could tell that they loved what I was doing. And the thing is I wasn't really doing anything. I was bringing myself to it, So that always felt very natural. Playing Mitch always just felt like an extension of me. I do remember Eric stone Street, however, who is very different from It's so genius, very different from his character.

Not gay, not like him at all.

I remember him at the table read, just petrified because the very first table read you do for these sitcoms, especially one that has as much expectation as Modern Family did. The entire executive staff aisles into this big conference room. Everyone from ABC was there, everyone from our producing company Fox was there.

Every higher up was there.

Everyone who makes the big decisions about what's on television was.

In that room. And we're seated at this long table.

All the actors who are playing these rules for the first time, are seated together. We all barely know one another, and this is a moment where oftentimes you do these table reads for these people and they say, you know what, that one doesn't work, and then reach right.

People lose their jobs after these.

I know, and somehow you're just excited.

That's nice.

I guess you're just not Jewish. You're really you don't have a Jewish gene in your body.

I was very confident about the modern family part.

Yeah, do you like performing in front of cameras better?

Or do you like performing in front of an audience better?

The easy short answer or is definitely theater. I love doing theater. I love that intimacy with an audience. I love being in charge of my performance. I love that it's not being taken away by an editor and Franken signed together into some other thing.

That being that, I really enjoy.

The intimacy of television as well, and like being able to be small and quiet and player scene without the expectation of laughs and just be connected to a character. But if you're asking me, like where my heart pulls me, it's always the theater, Is that right?

That's so sweet? I love knowing that about you.

Yeah, okay, now let's get into this for a minute, because as I was saying, I was at your wedding.

I don't know if you know that you remember, I do remember that.

The fabulous Tony Kushner and Mark was like, it was such a glamorous event. And you know, I'm married too, And I often say to myself, like, darling, why the hell did you do that? You know, like, why didn't you get married? Like as a gay person, you can be exempt from marriage, right, yeah, and yet we did it. Tell me why you got married, aside from the fact that you love Justin, which we get.

Well, that is the first part. You know.

I was of the era that really didn't feel like marriage was even an option for me. They have a domestic partnership, but yeah, I mean we didn't have that. We didn't have the hope of marriage equality. I met Justin, who ten years younger than me, and he was literally in the trenches fighting for marriage quality.

You know.

He was part of the nonprofit that funded the Proposition A case, which was the case that took away marriage equality here in California for a few years. He was, you know, on the front lines fighting for this thing, and I was inspired by his passion. I was inspired by his drive, and so he really brought out the activists in me, and together we developed TI the Knot, which was this foundation that was raising funds to support the marriage quality fight. So I just always felt like, for me, it was something that I wanted to do because partly because I was fighting for it, but it just felt like it was a really important word for me. You know, my parents were married for twenty years. They didn't make it past that, but I was inspired by the sanctity of marriage and like what that meant. And for me, it was a word that I wanted to be able to embrace myself, and it was a very important word for me.

Word it was an important word.

You said, it was an important word, and I wanted to be recognized as a married person, like I wanted the world to recognize Justin and I as a married couple.

It was very important to me.

And part of that was the word husband, and part of that was the word marriage. I love being married and I have like a deep, deep desire to be successful at it, maybe because my parents weren't. Justin's parents have been married for fifty one years, and I find them incredibly inspiring.

By the way, wait a minute, darling asking for a friend, is it an open relationship.

Me? And just yes, you had just no.

I couldn't resist that. I couldn't resist it.

I'm sorry.

Well, now we have kids, and I know, well that's another thing. Can we talk about that, please? Like, what were you thinking? What were you thinking?

We asked ourselves that, and then we spend thirty seconds with our children and we're like, oh, yeah, that's pretty great, but it's exhausting. It's a completely, you know, jarring shift of priorities. And we always said that we wanted to have kids, and then when the actual time was to do it, it was like, wow, okay, we're going to do this with being a gay couple. There's no like accident, you know, you really say okay, now we're doing this, and you go to a lab. If you don't make this farm, you make the rios, you find the surrogate, if you're doing it this way, or you find the adoption agency, like you go through the steps. Yes, you not say like, well, let's just see what happens. I feel like the children of same sex couples or couples that need to go to the turn means to have kids are the kids that are so desired, and I am so grateful that Justin and I got to do that. There was a point where we were thinking about number two and we were like, Okay, we're at a fork in the road.

We have one really great one. We can do another one, or we can I'm good. Are you good? I'm good, I'm good. And we decided ultimately to do too.

And you know, now we're in the thick of that, and it's like, oh my god, how we fucked everything up.

We're doing really good with one.

Now we got this other one and wow. But the thing is everyone can relate to this. Everyone who has kids can relate to this.

They can relate to what how great it is because.

Gret it, but also how exhausting it is and how you do have these moments of like what have I done?

Yeah?

What have I done?

Yes?

Well, darling, let me tell you. We got married because it became a national law.

You know.

I remember when I was sitting watching television with Arnold one night, who I'd known already for ten years, and we were like sick together as a couple and we loved each other and not an open relationship at least not that I know of. Okay, But the point is that, you know, he looked at the TV and he said, Darling, when that happens, we'll get married. And I was like, you got it, you know, And then it happened, and so we got married. I think only because we could and I thought, you know, we couldn't before. And I don't really believe in it, but I'm going to do it just because I got to do something.

Can't know everything right, but the kid thing.

I got to tell you, my dear, I actually I think I'd be a fantastic parent, But you have to put aside a lot of shit to be a parent.

Yes, like what a clean house?

Right?

Organization?

Yes, your free time, the ability to pick up and like just go on a vacation. I mean, Justin and I we traveled around so much.

But we also.

Had eight years of being together. We were married five years we were together three before that. We had eight years of like sort of doing our thing, and we kind of felt like we were.

At another chapter. We really want a kid.

I mean, you haven't met Beckett yet, but in Sullivan, our youngest one, we're on the fence about him self. No, he's great, like Beckett is an astonishingly amazing kid.

He's a name alone.

Well, Darling, let me just tell you something. Do we have dogs? Okay, Darling, Maybe as a father of children, you can relate a little bit to my hysteria. I used to say before people, but like you start having kids, kids are the dogs of straight people. But the point is that I think I dodged a bullet.

I do.

And these people are not teenagers yet are they? They're little kids, right, so it was still adorable. I'm just telling you. Teenagers are monsterssters.

I'm a monster, of course.

Yeah, me too.

Except it was different in those days when I was a kid, parenting was one. They didn't know where I was and they sort of didn't care. I'm not kidding. I started taking the subway when I went to high school and I learned how to take the subway to forty sixth Street.

And they never saw me again and there was.

No inquiry and they didn't care, and they didn't know, and I was in such mortal danger constantly. And so maybe think about that as a father, like, do you think you're an overprotective.

Father, probably just because the world is so different than it was when we were kids. I mean I grew up in Albuquerque and it was not the safest city, but it was like, my neighborhood is fine. Like I could be out in the evening playing with the neighborhood kids. My parents knew I was in the neighborhood and they weren't nervous about that. I just don't know what the world we're in now. I would feel comfortable saying, yeah, just go out and head home when it starts getting dark.

Is it more dangerous that?

Because when I was a kid darling in the nineteen late nineteen seventies, okay, going to New York, right, Yes, it was squalid o junkies, hookers, you know, pedophiles, porn. I mean that's all we saw. And we just like stepped over it and got to class and did our shit. And then we cut class and went to Bloomingdale's and all of my friends like shoplifted stuff from Bloomingdale's and we went to Central Park. We smoked a little you know, I smoked cigarettes. We smoked a little dope because we saw it was around us. It was so plain, you.

Know, the dangers of stuff.

Right.

Yeah, honestly, I don't know how we got to this conversation, but I do want to ask you a couple of things. More, I want to talk about you as a political figure. I saw your incredible Instagram post about Spelling Bee that day. Tell me about that. What was that about?

So yes, this musical I was in the original cast of on Broadway, the twenty fifth Anuel Putnam Unny Spelling Bee. It's about kids and a spelling bee and then also the trials and tribulations of being a kid and being an outsider. And one of the characters, Logan Schwartz and Grouvenir has two gay dads, and I played in addition to the character of Belief Cony Beer, one of the kids in the Spelling Bee.

I also doubled as one of the gay dads.

And it's a very kind of blue script as they say, you know, there's some risque language.

It's funny. It's an elevated comedy that sort of is great for kids.

But like a lot of stuff goes over their heads, and it's like a lot of really funny stuff parents as well. Kind of reminds me a little about like the Simpsons like, it works on several levels. So anyways, that's what the show is, and it's become very popular in schools, and there is a children's version of the show, like there's some stuff that's cut out for great schoolers and high schoolers. So there's this alternate version of the script that is available for kids.

One of the things that doesn't change is that it's one character has a super gay dads.

And there was a school that was doing this and somehow the school board found out, maybe they finally read the scripts, or maybe when the kids was talking about it.

At home and one of the parents was like, oh, I don't know about this.

Anyways, it terms in this thing where they were going to cancel the show because of some adult material in the show, and we caught wind of it. The original cast is spelling be, the original writer caught wind of it, and we sort of made a sink about it, and it became this discussion and we talked about, well, there's this alternate version of the show that can be done that has some of the stuff cut out, and it became very clear that what they were really fighting against was the gay dads. The gay dads, and so I put out something on Instagram sort of it in support of the kids, and you know, saying like, what message does this send? You know, I was a closeted kid in high school. I guarantee you there's kids who are in this school in the Midwest that are closeted and what message does this send to them? Anyway, long story short, it became a national news story. It was really exciting, and they ended up doing it.

They ended up doing the show. I think pressure from the community.

Did you fly in with the whole cast?

You know, I was doing take me out of the time.

We actually had a zoom with the cast when they were still waiting on the decision of whether they're going to do the show or not. The entire original cast got on this so great.

They all came up and told her I was playing role.

Yeah, it was really that is incredible. Oh, that's so great. And then you flew them all to Vegas.

Okay, that's right. Second, going to change tomorrow.

Okay, last question, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, what do you want the headline of your oh bit to say? Jesse Tyler Ferguson one hundred and two A really easy death go.

And he's still Owes Leah Delaria fifteen.

Wow, okay, I like that all right, And is there anything you want to promote?

Just this podcast that I'm starting, you're which I hope you'll be a guest on my podcast at some point in your future. It's called Dinners on Me, and I take friends of mine out to dinners in Los Angeles. I just did a few in New York when I was there, and we just have a great conversation over a great meal.

But now, ye, now, yeah, well you're amazing. I adore you. Thank you so much. And soon, I hope soon soon.

Yes, I hope to see you very soon. I miss you.

I miss you.

Mah.

Okay.

So talking to Jesse Tyler Ferguson, I think I am finally convinced that I am not going to strive and I am going to wait for the universe to sort of tap me on the shoulder and take me to the next level, you know, because I think that that's part of the power of actors and acting is just waiting around, waiting for the moment and then going for it. Anyway, I just love the guy, and hello, you heard it here. He wants me on his podcast. I want to go on his podcast because not only do you get to talk, but you get to eat.

And someone else pays.

Right.

I think the thing is called Dinner's on Me, so hey, Jesse Tyler ferguson Dinner's On You Anyway, This is Isaac Misrahi. Thank you, I love you, and I never thought I'd say this, but goodbye Isaac. Hello Isaac is produced by Imagine Audio, Awfully Nice and I AM Entertainment for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by me Isaac Msrahi. Hello Isaac is produced by Robin Gelfenbein. The senior producers are Jesse Burton and John Assanti. It is executive produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Karl Welker, and Nathan Cloke at Imagine Audio. Production management from Katie Hodges, Sound design and mixing by Cedric Wilson. Original music composed by Ben Waltzer. A special thanks to Neil Phelps and Sarah Katanak at I AM Entertainment.

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Hello Isaac with Isaac Mizrahi

Isaac Mizrahi is an expert -  at almost everything! He’s an iconic fashion designer, actor, singer,  
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