‘Modern Family’ First Look: Three Cheers for Kelsey Grammer as Cam’s Ex

Modern Family isn’t done with holiday hijinks quite yet. After a disastrous Thanksgiving party and an over-budget winter dance, the Pritchett clan will ring in the new year with a blast from the past when Kelsey Grammer surfaces in the Jan. 4 episode as a former circus man who disappeared without a reason and broke Cam’s heart.

“We have alluded to [Cam’s pre-Mitchell love life] a little bit from time to time but have never really met exes. Given that this guy was a ringmaster and we know Cam is a clown, it is a great little tie-in,” Eric Stonestreet told Yahoo TV during a visit to the set (actually, the Brentwood mansion Jay and Gloria call home) last November. “We love when they give us an opportunity to find out more about our character’s past. It’s something to chew on from a performance perspective, and I think audiences love it as well.”

“Ringmaster Keifth,” which also sees the return of Fred Willard as Phil’s dad, revolves around Cam seeking culinary redemption after blowing up the Thanksgiving turkey. He has promised to roast a whole pig in his in-law’s lawn on New Year’s Day. But when that “comeback meal” also starts to go south, desperate times call for desperate measures. Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) lets Cam use his e-Butler gift certificate, a recent Christmas present from his dad, to enlist a concierge’s help in securing perfectly prepared pork for a secret swap-out. Things get instantly more complicated when Cam recognizes the voice on the other end of the line as the one belonging to a former flame who ghosted him back when he was a naïve Missouri farm boy new to Los Angeles.

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“I’m the ex-lover-ringmaster-boyfriend who comes back into Cam’s life by chance for a brief bit of closure,” explained Grammer, who was burning up, thanks to the tuxedo costume and the unseasonably warm fall temps in Southern California at the time. “All these years later, he still has no idea why this guy left him, and it still hurts. He’s thought it was him the whole time.”

Stonestreet, looking silly in a “Cam and Get It” bovine-print apron complete with clattering cowbells, added: “There are some great, hilarious details in the script. Kelsey and I both think that one of the funnier lines is when Cam reveals that he saw Keifth at the circus and then started hanging out at circus bars trying to meet him. I would hit the circus bar in the valley, and then I would hit the circus bar on the west side. I love the thought of an L.A. bar for circus folk.”

The minute the writers/producers decided the past paramour had once commanded three rings in a top hat, Grammer’s name moved to the top of their wish list. Luckily, Cam isn’t the only guy who has history with Keifth. Grammer and Modern Family executive producer Christopher Lloyd became friends more than two decades ago when Lloyd was a writer for Frasier from 1993 to 2004. He also created Grammer’s 2007 news anchor sitcom, Back to You.

“I wouldn’t care what it was [because] Chris has one of the most extraordinary imaginations. It was Chris that actually wrote for the voice of Frasier on the show,” Grammer said. “You’d see him go off in a sort of a reverie trying to match in his mind what I might say. He does a sort of kind of Kabuki impression of me as Frasier. And then he’d start to spout a sentence. So I imagine he loaned a good deal of his inner voice to Frasier. But the bonus is that Keifth is also pretty funny, and I’ve never played a ringmaster before, so why not?”

Lloyd, who has always kept in touch with Grammer socially, has long dreamed of calling in a favor, but wasn’t going to waste his ace. “For one, we don’t really write a lot of big splashy guest roles, and we didn’t want to have him come in and do something that wasn’t special. But when you have a cool guest-starring role, like every other comedy in town you want to cast the best people, and Kelsey Grammer is as good as it gets.”

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Lloyd was especially sure Grammer was the perfect man for the job once the Modern Family team had fleshed out the general character concept. “It began with us looking at the world of Cam before he met Mitchell and what might have been an influential relationship for him. We’ve never really seen an ex-boyfriend, so we wanted to show someone who really shaped him, some larger-than-life character who took the clay of Midwestern Cam and molded him into the sophisticate that he believes himself to be today. The minute we landed on ringmaster we immediately went to flourish and a top hat and personality in spades,” said Lloyd. “This is a guy who still has all the grandeur of his ringmaster days, even though he has fallen on harder times and is working as a telephone concierge.”

“He is not playing just a plumber who changes a light bulb in their fridge. He’s a guy who shows up in a moment of need in a tuxedo with a peacock and a full roasted pig in the back of his rental car to save the day — and who Cam has unfinished business with,” Lloyd continued after a quick break to powwow about a scene with a handful of members from Stonestreet’s TV family. “Even before he agreed to do it, we fell in love with the idea that Kelsey might be playing this part because it was so perfect for him. I’m glad he said yes because I am not sure who else could have pulled off what we have written for him.”

Once Grammer had signed on, Lloyd admits that knowing the guest actor so well personally came in handy in the writing room. “We started tailoring the lines, and everyone started doing the baritone Frasier voice in the writers’ room when they were pitching lines for him. Keifth is very commanding, and Kelsey has a lot to play with. There are a lot of grand gestures and big colorful speeches referencing his past life with the circus. We wouldn’t normally do that for most one-episode parts.”

Perhaps the only unfortunate part of putting the episode together was having to act in close proximity to a wheelbarrow full of pig carcass, which was quickly defrosting in the sun. During a pause in shooting, Stonestreet joked, “They better not serve pork tacos for lunch tomorrow.” He later added, “I did a dead pig thing on American Horror Story. Pigs have recurred throughout my whole life. Weird.” Grammer quickly jumped on the opportunity to crack a joke. “You should maybe see someone about that. Like, ‘What am I doing in my daily life to project that I should be working with a dead pig?’“

Modern Family airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on ABC. Watch clips and full episodes of Modern Family free on Yahoo View.