Ty Burrell [Phil Dunphy on
Modern Family (2009)] calls shows like ours 'Trojan horses' because you sneak in there and make people feel comfortable. And then maybe you show a little bit of an agenda. But the audience is acclimated to it at a very comfortable rate...Obviously, our main objective is to be funny and make people laugh, and whatever comes out of it, comes out of it. But there were certain times, especially in our first season, when we didn't have any gay writers, when it was harder. Then in our second season, we acquired
Abraham Higginbotham, who was also a writer on
Will & Grace (1998)...He and
Jeff Richman are our two gay acquisitions. But in the first season, some of the writers would come to me and be like: 'Is this offensive? Are we going too far with this?' And
Eric Stonestreet [who plays Mr. Ferguson's partner on 'Modern Family"] was always concerned about making sure everything was up to my standards. And I kept saying: Stop worrying about it!...Once you start worrying about being offensive, you're doing a disservice to yourself and the creative process. I also begged them to get some gay writers so I didn't have to be bothered with their questions.
