Modern Family Spinoff: Eric Stonestreet on Cancelled Cam

Eric Stonestreet is opening up about a rejected Modern Family spinoff that didn't make it past the script stage.

The scrapped pilot, written in part by original series co-creator Christopher Lloyd, would have followed Cameron (played by Stonestreet), husband Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and teenage daughter Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) to a new state, after Cam accepted a coaching gig at the University of North Central Missouri in Modern Family's series finale.

"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,'" Stonestreet explained on In Depth With Graham Bensinger . "They just said, 'We don't want to do it.'

"I think Jesse and I maybe felt like they thought of us as the old guys, or something like that, that didn't seem worthy of keeping those characters going," he shared. "It felt a little hurtful. But people make business decisions."

To this day, the two-time Emmy winner maintains that the Cam-Mitchell offshoot would have been a "slam dunk," adding: "I don't think it would have not been successful. Because you had one of the creators — who had really taken such great care of making sure that show was great for so long — willing to do it."

Despite a spinoff being off the table now, Stonestreet remains hopeful for other creative ways to revive Modern Family in the future. "I wish we'd do a Christmas special, and there's been talk of that," he says.

Modern Family ran for 11 seasons on ABC , wrapping its run in April 2020. Stonestreet, Ferguson, Ty Burrell and Julie Bowen recently reprised their roles as Cam, Mitchell, Phil and Claire in a series of commercials for WhatsApp that began airing earlier this year. (TVLine has reached out to ABC for comment.)