Overview

• Ferguson revealed that the most intense feedback he received stemmed from gay viewers who felt Mitchell did not reflect their idea of a gay relationship.
• He recounted the 2010 Facebook campaign by fans that led Modern Family writers to create the episode "The Kiss" to explain on-screen intimacy.
• He revisited actor Tuc Watkins’s 2014 critique labeling the characters as resembling "the gay equivalent of 'blackface'."
• Ferguson said he weathered criticism with a grain of salt because he was tasked with portraying one character rather than representing a whole community.
• He highlighted Modern Family’s role in normalizing queer marriage on network TV as a catalyst for marriage equality discourse.