Dinner’s on Me with Jesse Tyler Ferguson - Side Dish: More with Dan Bucatinsky

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

More of my interview with ‘The Comeback’ star Dan Bucatinsky. We get into Dan's longtime collaboration with Lisa Kudrow and he shares hilarious behind-the-scenes stories from their comedy series Web Therapy. This episode was recorded at Louise’s Trattoria in Larchmont Village in Los Angeles, CA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Right now, we're in one of those seasons where everything is happening all at once. I'm getting ready for a play in New York. And then after that, I'm going to be doing a musical in London. And we're figuring out schedule, school, travel, where everyone's going to be, you know, all of it. And it's getting down to the wire. And in moments like that, I'm very aware of how helpful it is to have a little support, which is something I've been thinking about when I've thought about hosting my home on Airbnb. Listen, if you're traveling, relocating temporarily, or just juggling a lot, hosting can feel like just one more thing on your plate.

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coming to terms with being out in Hollywood and what that meant early in his career, how the industry has evolved, and the personal courage it took to live authentically in spaces that didn't always feel ready for it. We also dive into his longtime creative collaboration and friendship with Lisa Kudrow from working together on the comeback to building projects that reflect their shared sensibility like Who Do You Think You Are? And web therapy, two shows that I also got to be a part of. To get back into the conversation, you're pulling up a chair just as we talk about our experiences playing gay characters on television.

I mean, Mato Family was so groundbreaking and so great and such a moment in history to, you think about how Will and Grace changed the portrayal of the portrayal of. the gay character on television, and it opened the world up to a possibility that, you know, people in Middle America who claimed to it, who didn't realize that their wives, who didn't realize that their husbands are in the closet,

were suddenly able to, you know, say that they knew what a gay person looked like. Right. And then a decade later, we get to see a family integrated with that. It's just amazing. I mean, how did you feel about playing a gay dad on TV? I mean, I took a, I took the,

the opportunity very seriously. I obviously was a comedy, so like, you know, I mean, I mean that in just the way that I, I, I felt a responsibility in that role of like playing this gay character on television. And I wanted to, I was excited by the opportunity of showing a flawed human being that was trying to figure out parenthood. Yeah. And, you know, I also was very cognizant of the fact that we were, were at that time living in a country that was fighting toward something that we now

considered to be law of land for a while. Yeah. Marriage equality. Yeah. And, you know, that was, but we were still in the trenches fighting for that. I thought this is going to be a great cultural touchstone for that. So I felt like all that responsibility. And I took it very seriously.

I'm so glad because, by the way, there's no way you can quantify. how each cultural moment plays a role in the bigger picture. Like getting America on board with marriage equality at the time that it happened, which didn't happen until 2015. But you have to credit those that became before it. And those who were portraying characters, I mean, by sheer chance I wrote my college thesis on the portrayal of the American family on situation comedies.

Really? I was fascinated by whether or not the portrayal of the family at a particular time in history is because of the changes in society or are in fact enacting the changes in society. It was like which one of these is influencing more? Is it that the TV producers are trying to mirror reality or are our portrayals helping to change, and it was a very difficult thing to prove because it's happening simultaneously. There's no question that the role that you played, that you both played, as playing that a couple, a normalized couple of gay men in a family who have a baby and who are navigating

their marriage and love life and the family and judgment and the closet and parenthood, all while making us laugh was not an unbelievable force in helping our country bit by bit, piece by piece, and subliminally, like a Trojan horse, to greater acceptance. So you were right to take that on,

but you did it so gracefully and with laughs. Look, I was playing a guy who was going to ultimately get murdered by his husband. So in a show... In a show... Also relatable. So relatable. 100%.

How many times if you want it to kill Dawn. You know, today. At what time? I, I didn't really think about, I mean, I did. I did. I was aware of, to me, what was the most eye-opening about being on a show like scandal is that the community that, I mean, a lot of people were watching that show, but there was a demographic of Americans.

The Bipak community, if people still say that, The people of color, Latinos, and brown people from every background, really loved watching Carrie Washington in that kind of position. And playing with the government and making it seem outrageous at a time when, I mean, we can never make that show now because we couldn't possibly get away with it because it's too outrageous in real life. That's right. The notion of a president smothering a Supreme Court judge with a pillow.

in a hospital room, happened on scandal, and you 100% could believe that happening in real life. Yeah. So, but at the time, it was gasp-worthy television. And my character got to play this little piece of normal, driven, responsible, lovely, I just want to be a dad, don't get in my way. And what was so satisfying is that I think I was most related to, by other black women.

Other women who were moms, I have never, in my life, experienced that kind of outpouring of love from a community. I thought I had nothing in common with. And they saw me holding that, my black daughter, and in that nursery,

and fighting for her life and fighting to be her dad in a way that they related to. And people loved James for that reason. It was wild. To this day, it's a, it's a big part of the audience group. Now there's, obviously, it's much wider than that. Yeah.

But I felt the responsibility to like, oh, this is what we all have in common. That's really what it was about. It wasn't about like, you know, gays are people too. It was more like, you know, all of us. Would you any? It's more human connection, right? The fierce loyalty to being parents. Right.

And then to be in this crazy, ridiculous marriage. It was, it was. People loved Cyrus and James. I'm like, what do you love about us? It's the most dysfunctional marriage on the planet. He's a lunatic. I'm with a psycho who's tried to kill me now twice. Claims to love me.

People like, you guys are so sweet together. I'm like, what are you seeing? People, because the show was so crazy and about torture that anybody who was married and had a baby was like, they're the touchstones of the show. Right, right, right, right. Like, okay, don't try this at home. Now for a quick break, but don't go away.

When we come back, Dan reflects on his past as an in-the-closet actor and coming to turns of being out in Hollywood. Okay, be right back. I love beautiful landscaping. I love having a beautiful backyard, gorgeous trees, flowers, the idea of it's incredible. And then I actually go to a nursery and I immediately feel overwhelmed. I'm wandering around trying to figure out what works, what won't. die in two weeks, how I'm even going to get at home in my car, especially when I have, hypothetically, two small children who have completely different priorities than plant shopping.

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Fast-growing trees.com, code D-O-M. Now is the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use code D-O-M to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. So on a recent episode, we had Ted Danson on. And if you know Ted, you know he's very passionate about protecting the oceans and buying sustainable wild-caught seafood.

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And third, it's all sustainably sourced from Alaska supporting responsible fishing practices. lately I've been really into their Pacific halibate. It's firm, meaty, great for searing, and the Pacific rockfish, which has this amazing, bold flavor and works beautifully in a quick pan fry. And also, there's no risk here. If you're not completely satisfied with your first box, Wild Alaskan company will give you a full refund, no questions asked. Not all fish are the same. Get seafood you can trust. Go to Wild Alaskan.com slash JTF for $35 off your first box of premium wildcom. hot seafood. That's wildalaskan.com slash JTF for $35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan company for sponsoring this episode. And we're back with more dinners on me. Listen, I moved to L.A. in 91. The AIDS crisis was barely in the rear view mirror. Yeah. Barely in the rearview mirror. I graduated from college and all the people I was waiting tables with in New York were positive and dropping.

like flies and that was 87. So within four or five years of that I was an actor in L.A. and I think that crisis at a time in my life that was 15 to 25 was formative. It took a very long time to sort of

shake the negative stigma. Well and I think that's something that is worth bringing up because I think that sometimes you know people can get there's a lot of judgment around like how people choose to come out. Oh totally. And I feel very, so often people are just not looking at the circumstances of what's happening

that person's life at that moment, whether it be where they were raised or how they felt, how they felt supported by their families or something like the AIDS crisis, which was terrifying. You know, I was a little young to sort of, I was on the other side of it. But, you know, it was even for me, like, for my parents when I was coming out when I was young and they were like, okay, we might have this young kid who is gay. they would see things about people dying of AIDS on television, and they would start crying because they would think that that's exactly where I was heading. That was the path.

And it made me feel like on the other side of it, having not even been able to even start exploring relationships, like, oh, I've got to be careful. Like, I can't, waiting in these waters is terrifying. Correct. And, you know, so I had my own experience with, you know, that crisis, but it sort of like chopped me off at the legs a little bit. Yeah, of course.

Of course. And also, there's so much judgment involved, like being gay was synonymous with having AIDS for a long time. And you were like, there are, there's so much more to it than this. And there's so much about this disease that needs to, that needs our attention. And it didn't get that attention. Certainly not in the 80s. And then later, having to convince our parents that there's a whole other life to lead that that is possible. I think a big part of my. my desire to like be kind of heteronormative in my path as a gay man. Like I wanted to get married and I wanted to have kids. And it was sort of to push back against any belief that you can't have everything and still be a gay person. It's so interesting that you had those desires because I didn't necessarily have those desires. And yet my husband is 10 years younger than he did because he saw a possibility in that. And I just didn't see it as something that was even an option. An option.

Yeah. I mean, I saw. what Don's lawyer, and I don't remember what year this was, really a gay lawyer in Hollywood, married, had a baby naming and commitment ceremony at the Chateau Marmont, like in 1996, 97, and my eyes were like, I couldn't believe what I was saying. I was so unbelievably moved by it because I was literally watching two men do what I thought was the impossible. And right around then I was invited to the Glad Awards. It wasn't, was it the Glad Awards?

I think it was. It was very different than the Glad Awards now. It was not quite as huge. And it wasn't watched by the whole country. But I couldn't believe my eyes. I was like, oh my God, I'm in a giant ballroom with all these tuxedoed men and women. And it was a celebration. Again, I didn't think it was possible.

I just didn't think that kind of outness was possible. And I was still, what, 30, 31? So cut to 25 years later, there's so much progress that's been made. And now I'm like too old to enjoy it. Too old to enjoy it. I think in hindsight, we all would love to, I would love to go back and redo so many things. Absolutely. The things that held us back.

Knowing what I know now and where we were heading. and like, sure, absolutely. But you weren't held back. You, you, I mean, I'm sure you were held back by fears and by, like, the things that are internal. But I'm, in many ways, the decade between us allowed you, well, listen, every decade got a little bit more. Yeah. Your decade got a little bit more, I think a decade. Justin's decade is allowed even more in terms of what feels possible internally.

It's not really about what's literally possible. It's what we perceive to be possible. And we stop ourselves way more than the world is stopping us. And so it just took me a long time. And now I want to wave my freak flag. My freak flag. I think that what did it to me, and it wasn't, this is just an example of how powerful a fucking closet is.

I made that movie all over the guy. which was a love story, I started in it, I wrote it. Much of it was autobiographical, and I refused to talk about how autobiographical it was to the press. I was like, well, the writer is out, but the actor isn't out. I was like, and I'm a college-educated individual. When I'm saying it now, I'm like, what kind of dumbass do you? Did I actually think I could get away with talking about

sort of the autobiographical tones of my script, but the actor, I don't need, it's none of your business who I sleep with, like hanging on for dear life to this idea that in order for me to be the chameleon that I think I want to be, you can't know about my personal life. And I still to this day believe that like, depending on the career you have, depending on the kind of roles you think you can get, sure, who you vote for, what religion you are, what your politics is, what your sexuality is. The more of a mystery you are, the more you can play. That's true.

Right. But who, you know, it became quite clear. Well, that has been recently, you know, I feel like it has been sort of embedded in almost anyone's life. I'm not even going to say in the entertainment industry, but like such a need from everyone to know what everyone, where everyone stands on everything. A hundred percent. And I don't think that that's necessarily something that is doing anyone any go.

No. And social media has made it to that, like, you have a window into the real lives of any celebrity that wants to tell you about it. And if they don't, they don't. And to hang on to your privacy becomes a way, well, sadly, either create mystery and more intrigue or a complete, in my case, people's lack of interest. So, you know, you have to sort of pedal whatever you can to grab on to whatever you can. Right, right, right. Now for a quick break, but don't go away. When we come back, Dan shares all about his longtime collaboration with Lisa Kudrow,

and he tells me hilarious behind-the-scenes stories from their comedy series Web Therapy. All right, be right back. Reggie, I just sold my car online. Let's go, Grandpa. Wait, you did? Yep, on Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered a few questions. Got an offer in minutes.

Easier than setting up that new digital picture frame. You don't say. Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow. Talk about fast. Wow. Way to go. So about that picture frame. Forget about it.

Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested. Carvana made easy. On Carvana. Pick up these may apply. And we're back with more dinners on me. Did you try and create a lot of things that didn't work? Oh, yeah. I mean, we made a lot of things.

We developed a ton of things. We developed a ton of things. I mean, the experience of developing at Warner Brothers for three years, they were very supportive of us and would give us access to talent and to books and to writers and to showrunners. And we made a pilot in 2005, my daughter was born. The comeback came out and we made a pilot with Janine Garofalo based on the life of Annie Duke, a poker champion. and I made a pilot called Commuters with Christine Taylor and David Arquette and I mean we made, there was so many things going on in 2005

our heads almost exploded. So it was a very vibrant, vital time. 2003, 2004, 2005. Friends was over around 2007. We started making Who Do You Think You Are and Web Therapy. The comeback happened before Friends was off the air? No, Friends was off the air in 2004. Okay.

Right at the end of France, Michael and Lisa had lunch, and they cooked up this idea and HBO said, sure. Because I just remember, like, what, I was so inspired by that. I was like, oh, you know, there's so many things that someone could do after the successful run of a 10-year show. Yeah. And to go back onto television, but then onto, like, a cable network with this, like, character that was so different and dark and, like...

Oh, my God, so different. I mean, listen, Lisa is one of my best friends, but I'm going to tell you, objectively, one of the smartest humans, most talented, intuitive, insightful, like, crazy, her ability to figure out the nuance of a character. One reason I loved partnering with her was because when we were developing a story and we would meet with the writers, her ability to suss out, like what would be an interesting motivation for a character or where the drive of the story was. I mean, she's a genius. And we really yin-yanged each other because I was more savvy in the areas of maybe the actual business and navigating the studio and the network.

But I was also a writer, so I could give writer notes in a very collaborative way. but I had an appetite that drove Lisa crazy. I mean, I was like, let's do more. Let's do a talk show. Let's also do a, this show, and let's also do that. And he's like, let's just focus on. She was very good at sort of making me focus.

Right, right, right. And I was pretty good at sort of nudging her out of her comfort zone from time to time. And we've even produced a game show called 25 Words or Less, which has been on the air. We're about to start our eighth season. Where is it airing? It airs every day.

It's a syndicated daytime talk show that is hosted by Meredith Vieira, who is a dream. Yes. We've made over 1,200 episodes. Wow. Yeah, I know. And with web therapy, that started off on literally online. On the web. And this was, wait, from what I remember, I don't remember anything else like that existing.

Was it on YouTube? Or was it on like... It wasn't on YouTube. was on a, we were approached about doing web episodes. And Lisa was like, these web episodes are pilots that people did not get produced, that they're breaking into three parts. And it just doesn't feel organic to the web. The only thing I can imagine in a million years being really funny on the web is somebody

who actually is trying to get their, to make money as a professional on the actual web. Like therapy. People were doing therapy on the web. Imagine a therapist who only does three minutes. at sessions because it's during your lunch break at work that you're getting therapy. She thought that that would just be a funny concept. And we were approached by Lexus, the car company, because they launched a platform called L's Studio.

They were not selling cars on it. It wasn't Lexus.com. It was L's studio where interesting documentaries and short-form content, they were way ahead of their time. They were doing short-form content on a Lexus-sponsored platform, but he had nothing to do with cars. And they said, whatever you and Lisa want to do. And Lisa said, the only thing I can think of that would be fun to do is this therapist.

And so we got to keep, we got to own the content, which was amazing. Yeah. I mean, that as a model for what the future had in store for itself was kind of ahead of its time. They financed us making little webisodes. We agreed to post them. on L Studio and had a contract for how much time they could exploit those episodes. But we owned it. And then our agents said, you guys have made all of these three-minute episodes.

If you strung a bunch of them together, you could have a 30-minute half-hour. And we could license this to another platform. And we're like, I guess, but we're not designing them as 30 minutes. Right. So we pitched it to Showtime. And Bob Queenblad, who was the head of Showtime at the time, the legendary Bob Greenblatt was like, yeah, let's do it. And then Don, my husband Don, was also a creator, producer, and director of these.

The three of us got together and were like, if we're going to do them as half hours, let's design them as half hours. So we'll make them so that they work each scene on its own so that they can play first on the internet. Yes. And then we'll tie them together so that the storylines could play as half hours. And so we outlined the shit out of these seasons. and the deal

we made was that they would have to air online first and Showtime would be licensing existing content. They didn't own it. They were just licensing these half hours at a very, very low at a very low rate and we managed to and because people, we would improvise the show

and there were no notes from the studio. We got to do whatever we wanted. Everybody wanted to play with Lisa. I mean, that's why I was there. I mean... In an afternoon. We shot all your scenes in four hours. We did the same thing with Merrill Streep

and Meg Ryan and Conan O'Brien and Steve Carell. And it's... We're very proud. We did me 24 half-hour episodes. I mean... And, you know, it was... There's also most things when it was on.

I was like, oh, my God, what a great idea. It really grew out of... Why hasn't thought about this? What if somebody hung... All the good ideas start with just a what if. Right. You know, and Lisa got to figure out who this character was. Yeah.

And the only limitation we gave ourselves was that the only cameras that could ever capture either the patient or the therapist would have to be a webcam. Yes. Like we could not ship this objectively. I mean, it makes everything so easy. Yeah, there was no like outside of the office scenes. They were some outside the office scenes. Because there came, when we did our second season, Lexus was like, well, we're paying for all these. So we're going to need you to mention Lexus at some point, and we're going to need to see the Lexus at some point.

And we were like, this is crazy. Like, this is not the way people have therapy. Right. But we figured out a way to make, to justify it. We took it as a challenge to figure out how our characters might wind up doing therapy from their laptops in the car in a parking lot. Because remind me, was FaceTime a thing then? Skype was. Skype was.

Right, because it was fine. We squeezed a little bit of money out of Skype. Yeah, I was going to say. Again, the brand partnering stuff, like we would get on the phone and just trying to make deals with these companies. That would give us not huge amounts of money, but our budgets weren't very big. Right. So you get 20 grand from Curig to put a coffee pot behind you, a coffee maker behind you. You're like, we'll take it, you know.

Yeah. It's amazing how often that happens in television and people don't realize. I, you know, we would, with modern family, I know cars were a big thing. Yeah. And you guys were always in cars. We were always in cars. It's like, but they would push, they, the companies would push it a little bit. Like they were like, let's see if we can get like some language out of the characters.

And so like we would sometimes have to write in stuff about the car. Oh, God. And it would get. And say it? But without saying the name of the car? I don't know. I don't know if we could. Could you talk about the feature of the car without saying?

It was features. Yeah, you wouldn't be like, God, I love that Jeep Cherokee. No, no, no, no, no. Because that's hard. I don't think it was that. I think it was, like, about features that the car had. But we would always laugh really hard with those would come up because, yeah. We did it.

We did it. We did it with Crystal Light, and it was really awkward. Yeah. We built a storyline where Alan Cumming had to make a mock tale with Crystal Light and on camera. And we're like, all right, now. the tail wagon, the dog. Right, yeah. I mean, I go back and watch them now

and find them so funny because it's almost like an improv game. It's like, okay, we're going to give you a household. You know, we're going to give you these three random things and you have to work them into your story in an organic way. So we would work these things into the story in an organic way, but the number of scenes that we,

the number of sessions that Valerie, that Fiona had from inside of a vehicle, was a little bit more than normal. In fact, my character got run over by her car at one point. So we got a shot, I guess a camera shot. I wonder what camera captured that?

I don't know. There was a shot of me getting hit by her Lexus, and we had to talk about whether, was that seeing the car in a negative light? As long as it was Jerome's fault, and it was my fault that I threw myself in front of the car. That's why we did that. That was a little side dish for my conversation with Dan Buchatinski.

If you haven't heard our full conversation yet, make sure to check it out on Dinner's on Me. This episode of Dinners On Me was recorded at Louise's Tatoria in Larchmont Village in Los Angeles, California. Next week on Dinner's On Me, you know her from the movie musical version of Mean Girls and Spider-Man No Way Home. She's now starring in the gripping Apple TV Plus series The Last Thing He Told Me, it's on Gowery Rice. We'll talk about what it was like working alongside Jennifer Gardner and how growing up in the industry shaped the kinds of roles she's drawn to today. Plus, we get into her podcast and why storytelling has become such an important creative outlet. Dinner's On Me is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and a kid named Beckett Productions. It's hosted by me, Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

It's executive produced by me and Jonathan Hirsch. Our showrunner is Joanna Clay. Our associate producer is Alyssa Midcalf. Sam Bear engineered this episode. Hans Dale She composed our theme music. Our head of production is Sammy Allison. Special thanks to Tamika Balance Collapse. And Justin McKita.

I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson. Join me next week. I'm Craig Melvin. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. I've always been a glass half full kind of guy. And now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too.

Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, challenges. Their stories are funny and quite candid. So I hope you'll join me each week. And who knows? You might just come away with your own glass half full. Search Glass Half-Full with Craig Nelson from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast.