Eric Stonestreet just revived one of his longest-running Modern Family traditions — mercilessly trolling Jesse Tyler Ferguson with heavily edited photos.

Stonestreet recently reunited with Ferguson and former co-star Ty Burrell backstage at Ferguson’s New York performance of Tru, the stage production where the actor portrays famed writer Truman Capote. But while Ferguson posted normal reunion photos online, Stonestreet uploaded digitally altered versions that hilariously made Ferguson look decades older, complete with white hair and exaggerated wrinkles.

“I’d tell you to go see @jessetyler in his Truman play, but I saw it late, and it’s almost over!,” Stonestreet joked in his Instagram caption while praising Ferguson’s performance.

He also admitted the amount of dialogue in the production gave him “so much anxiety,” calling Ferguson’s stage work “truly impressive.”

Ferguson simply responded in the comments, “Here we go.”

The playful trolling has quietly become one of Stonestreet’s favorite running jokes online. Over the years, he has repeatedly posted Photoshopped images designed to age Ferguson dramatically, including edited photos connected to the Emmys, podcast appearances, and multiple cast reunions dating back to at least 2019.

And for longtime Modern Family fans, the funniest part of the reunion wasn’t even the cast photo itself.

The Modern Family cast’s off-screen chemistry still feels exactly the same

Part of what continues making the joke land with fans is how naturally the cast still slips back into the same chaotic family dynamic that made Modern Family such a long-running sitcom success in the first place. While Stonestreet spent the reunion publicly trolling Ferguson online, Ferguson’s own Instagram post barely acknowledged either of his former co-stars. Instead, he jokingly focused his attention on Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Bess Wohl.

A huge part of that dynamic has always been the real-life friendship between Ty Burrell and Eric Stonestreet, whose off-screen personalities often carried the same chaotic energy as Phil Dunphy and Cam Tucker. Fans have repeatedly pointed out that even years after the finale, the pair still tends to derail interviews and reunions with improvised jokes and constant teasing.

And somehow, Jesse Tyler Ferguson usually ends up becoming the main target. Whether it is Stonestreet digitally aging him by decades through Photoshop edits or the rest of the cast roasting him online during reunions, Ferguson has become the center of one of the show’s longest-running post-series jokes. Even Sofía Vergara has regularly joined the chaos on social media, keeping the sitcom’s family dynamic alive for fans long after the series finale aired.

Even years after Modern Family ended its 11-season run, moments like these continue reminding fans why the cast’s chemistry became one of the show’s biggest strengths both on and off screen.

Do you think Modern Family still has one of the best sitcom casts ever assembled?

Written by

Aarav Poonia

Edited by

Hriddhi Maitra