Jesse Tyler Ferguson reveals how dad reacted to 'Modern Family' role

Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s dad had a hard time accepting his gay roles in Hollywood.

Jesse opened up about his dad’s journey to accepting his gay sexuality. He noted that his father accepted that he was gay, but struggled to accept him being gay openly and on a major network show like Modern Family.

In the hit sitcom, Jesse played Mitchell and Eric Stonestreet played his husband Cam Tucker.

Speaking on his podcast Dinner’s On Me, he said, "My family, they went through their own process with me being gay. My dad even asked me, while I was doing Modern Family, he's like, 'I just don't always understand why you have played so many gay parts.' It opened up a whole conversation between the two of us, and started a whole other level of our relationship.”

He said that that was "why it was important for me to play this role. Because, socially, I wanted to be able to portray a gay man on television. I felt like it was gonna do wonderful things for the marriage equality movement, which it did."

While Jesse family knew that he was gay, his dad still struggled with his publicly gay image.

"It was one thing for him to accept me being gay quietly, but it was another thing for me then to be doing that on a major network," the actor shared, noting that “there are steps of acceptance.”