Eric Stonestreet is reflecting on Midwestern life.
In Friday’s episode of “In Depth With Graham Bensinger,” the 53-year-old shed light on “living in Kansas City since ‘Modern Family’ ended basically.”
Stonestreet shared that leaving his home in KC for Los Angeles gigs has illuminated some Hollywood highs and lows.
“What I realized it does is it highlights everything great about our business, the entertainment business,” the actor reflected. “And it highlights all the douchebaggery of our business. It amplifies it. Because I’m here, I’m dealing with people from here, and I’m going into the store and having all these authentic, real moments, and then I go to Hollywood, and you’re reminded of some of the types of people that you deal with.”
Stonestreet, who podcaster Taylor Strecker recently called out for being the “worst guest” she ever had on her podcast, adds that there are some positives in the mix.
“But then you’re also offered fruit on a big board,” he said. “‘Would you like some lychee and kiwi, sir?’ It’s like, oh, yeah, this is what’s great about Hollywood … So, it’s really fun. It just amplifies it. It’s like, leaving [Kansas City] and going back and doing something is almost more fun than it was living there, doing it.”
And Stonestreet has no qualms about returning to the City of Angels for jobs here and there, like his WhatsApp commercial alongside “Modern Family” co-stars Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.
“It was fun,” he dished. “It was great to be back with everybody. It was very exciting. It’s weird to get back in those clothes – just jump right back in.”
However, fans shouldn’t expect a bigger project out of the commercial. When asked about the chance of a “Modern Family” reboot, Stonestreet replied, “I don’t think it’s potential anymore.”
He explained: “Well, 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.’”
Which didn’t sit well with Stonestreet and Ferguson, 48, who starred on the sitcom for 11 seasons from 2009 to 2020.
“I think it hurt Jesse and I’s feelings,” confessed the actor. “I think it hurt Chris Lloyd’s feelings.”
Stonestreet revealed that the cast, including Ed O’Neill, Sofia Vergara, Sarah Hyland, Ariel Winter, Nolan Gould, Rico Rodriguez and Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, would have even been open to returning after a one-year, pandemic-influenced hiatus.
“I love my character. I love the show. I love Jesse. We had a great working relationship … Like, I would have kept going,” Stonestreet expressed. “I think everyone would have kept going a year away from being done with the show. You give everybody a year’s time to be like, ‘Do you wanna go back?’ Everybody says yes. And maybe even ABC at the time would have been like, ‘Yeah, come back, come back, come back.’ Because the world shut down and everything was different… I think Jesse and I maybe felt like they thought of us as the old, old, old guys, or something like that, that didn’t seem worthy of keeping those characters going.”
“It just felt a little hurtful,” he divulged. “But people make business decisions. I mean, we can’t get involved in that.”
But Stonesreet isn’t closing the door on other ways to see the gang back together again.
“I wish we would do a Christmas special or something like that,” he shared. “And there’s been talk of that. Like a couplewriters have had that idea of, like, doing sort of like British, sort of versions of Christmas specials. Like a two-hour movie every once in a while. That’d be fun.”
