Jesse Tyler Ferguson recalls embarrassing memory with Vanessa Williams

Jesse Tyler Ferguson recently opened up about how he mistakenly kept talking to a stranger, thinking it was Vanessa Williams.

Williams illuminated Dinner’s on Me podcast with her presence on Tuesday, August 11, where the host, Ferguson, revealed that he had wanted to talk to her, his former Miss America friend, but he ended up chatting with an unknown person for years.

The 50-year-old American actor told the audience that he and Williams exchanged their numbers while working on Sondheim on Sondheim at the Hollywood Bowl in 2017; however, they never talked on messages.

Calling to mind, he said, “I would text you occasionally, but I never would get a response.”

“It didn’t bother me. I was never waiting for Vanessa to text me back. But I would always text you again like, ‘Oh, the last text I sent to her is right there. She never responded. Oh well, she’s busy.’ This happened for, like, a few years,” Ferguson explained.

The Modern Family star went on to share that he kept texting her “little things” such as the photographs of his children and screenshots, but he never received a reply.

Notably, Ferguson and Williams met again in New York City while she was appearing on Broadway in POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive and he was “across the street doing Take Me Out” in 2022.

He said, “For your last show, basically I know the entire cast of POTUS at this point, so I sent a group text to you all.”

“The first line of your play was the C-word, see you next Tuesday—it’s spoken by Julie White—so I said, ‘Congratulations! Have a great last show, C-word.’ The comments go, ‘Haha, that’s so funny,’ and then I see, ‘Vanessa Williams has left the conversation,’” Ferguson recalled.