Jesse Tyler Ferguson has nothing but love for his Modern Family costars — even if his TV daughter, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, sometimes leaves him on read.
“I just called her the other day, and it went straight to voicemail,” Ferguson, 49, exclusively told Us Weekly of Anderson-Emmons, 17, while promoting his partnership with Tovala for their smart oven.
He joked that being silenced was a hit to his ego. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, she sent me to voicemail!’” Ferguson continued. “I’m calling her, and she’s sending me to voicemail. She’s like, ‘Oh God, my TV dad’s calling me.’”
The actor noted that he met Anderson-Emmons when she was only 3 years old, so he still thinks of her as a little girl at times. “But, you know, she’s a different human being now,” he confessed.
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Ferguson played Mitchell Pritchett on Modern Family for 11 seasons from 2009 to 2020. Anderson-Emmons joined the cast in 2011 as Mitchell and husband Cameron Tucker’s (Eric Stonestreet) daughter, Lily Tucker-Pritchett.
Although Ferguson didn’t love being sent to voicemail by his former costar, he told Us he’d love to reunite with Anderson-Emmons and the rest of the cast for a movie.
“We’ve been away from these characters for four or five years, like, let’s just drop in and see what’s happening five years later,” he said of his ideas for a movie catch up. “Maybe Mitch and Cameron still moved away and you want to see these characters together, so it could be around some sort of family reunion.”
Ferguson added that he’d “love to check in with Lily” and see how she acts as a teenager, who would be “almost on her way to college.”
As for the rest of the story line, he felt like it shouldn’t be “too different than the show.” Instead, Ferguson suggested the possible move would be a “deeper history of what’s happened over the past five years” and what the kids are “dealing with” at the time.
The script doesn’t really matter to Ferguson, who revealed that the close cast is just “dying to all be together again. We love each other so much.”
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If the Modern Family cast does do a reunion it needs to be quick, according to Sofía Vergara, who played Gloria Delgado-Pritchett.
“We don’t have much time, since Ed [O’Neill] is old,” Vergara, 52, joked during a January appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, referring to her TV husband, who played Jay Pritchett.
Vergara later confessed that she doesn’t think they need a reunion yet. “It don’t know but it doesn’t seem right,” she added. “I feel like we need a little more time.”
Ferguson, meanwhile, told Us that Vergara’s comments about O’Neill, 78, prove how close the cast became during their sitcom run.
“We love teasing each other so much. We love, you know, making each other laugh,” he explained. “Ed has such a great sense of humor. He read that. He was like, ‘I cannot believe she said that.’ But also like, well, Ed you are the oldest one. If we’re looking chronologically, you’re the one we’re most worried about.”
As fans and Ferguson alike wait for someone to greenlight a Modern Family reunion, the actor is keeping busy with other projects — once of which is teaming up with Tovala to promote their smart oven.
“I love Tovala. I am super busy now that I have two kids,” he told Us of the partnership. “I have this [‘Dinner’s on Me’] podcast. I actually eat out on my podcast. So, like, sometimes I need to make meals for my family who doesn’t eat out with me on my podcast. I need to do something easy.”
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Ferguson explained that the appliance makes dinner time stress-free. “I’m also such a foodie. I don’t love just throwing in a microwave meal,” he said, noting that Tovala’s Smart Oven makes him feel like he’s “still sort of participating” in the cooking process.
The Tovala Smart Oven allows customers to order pre-made meals that they pop into the warmer for easy at-home dinners and desserts.
“It can be healthy, or it could be a little naughty, like, their desserts are also delicious. So, you know, I love that,” Ferguson teased. “It sort of gives me the options to eat healthy when I want to and to eat a little more luxuriously what I want to, and [it] also tastes incredible.”
For more information on Tovala’s Smart Oven, check out their website, tovala.com.
With reporting by Amanda Williams
