Jesse Tyler Ferguson has revealed he wasn’t enthused by the idea of a Modern Family spinoff focused on Mitch and Cam because he wanted to try doing other things.
Ferguson played the uptight environmental lawyer Mitchell Pritchett in the beloved sitcom, which ran for 11 seasons from 2009 to 2020. On the show, his character is in a long-term relationship with Missouri native Cameron Tucker (Eric Stonestreet).
Over the course of the series, Mitch and Cam become one of the show’s central couples, adopting a Vietnamese daughter, Lily, early in the show and getting married in a widely praised wedding episode after the 2013 legalisation of same-sex marriage in California.
By the end of the series, the couple decide to relocate to Missouri after Cam lands a college football coaching job, moving with Lily and newly adopted baby son, Rexford. The spinoff would have followed the family’s life in the Missouri farm Cam grew up in.
In a new interview, Ferguson shared the mixed feelings he had when conversation around the Mitch and Cam spinoff started at the network.
“Modern Family ended and then we had a pandemic, you know. I was so excited for this next chapter of my life, and then it was like, everyone go inside,” Ferguson told Wendi McLendon-Covey on his Dinner’s On Me podcast.
“During that time, they were brewing this idea of maybe doing a Modern Family spinoff with [Eric Stonestreet] and I, which I was interested in, but I was also supposed to do this play in New York.”
After spending more than a decade on the sitcom, Ferguson said he wanted to try something different and “feel what it’s like not to do that”.
“It sort of felt like, as the reality of, maybe the spinoff was actually going to happen, I literally felt like, ‘Oh my god, I want to date other people,’” he said.
Ultimately, the spinoff “ended up not working out”.
McLendon-Covey chose to remain optimistic, telling Ferguson that she believed Modern Family would “come back”.
“After a little bit more time, it'll come back and it'll be the right time because enough time will have happened for new ideas to germinate. And you'll all want to do it by that time,” said the St Denis alum.
In 2022, Ferguson talked about the script for the spinoff and described it as “very good”.
“So you know, who knows? If someone wants to produce it, maybe,” he told ET.
In 2024, Stonestreet said it was “hurtful” to have the spin-off series rejected by ABC.
“I don’t think it’s potential anymore. They had their chance. Chris Lloyd and a couple of the writers wrote a really great script that spun Jesse and I off in our life in Missouri, and they said, ‘No.’ They just said, ‘We don’t want to do it,’" he told Deadline.
Modern Family co-creator Christopher Lloyd had been on board as a writer. Lloyd created the show with Steven Levitan.
“I love my character. I love the show. I love Jesse. We had a great working relationship, we had amazing chemistry. I think Jesse and I maybe felt like they thought of us as the old guys, or something like that, that didn’t seem worthy of keeping those characters going. It felt a little hurtful. But people make business decisions.”
Fans have consistently asked for a reunion episode, which several actors have shown interest for. Stonestreet has wished for a Christmas special, and Ed O’Neill, who played Jay Pritchett, previously said that he is “open” to the idea.
Across its 11 seasons, Modern Family won 22 Emmy awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series five years in a row from 2010 to 2014. The series also won Outstanding Casting thanks to its brilliant ensemble cast, which also featured Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, and Sofia Vegara.
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