Jesse Tyler Ferguson Acquires Stage Rights to Truman Capote Play TRU

Jesse Tyler Ferguson is looking ahead to his next theater project. During a recent episode of his Dinner's on Me podcast, the Tony winner shared that he has purchased the rights to Tru, the 1989 play about writer Truman Capote by Jay Presson Allen.

"I did a reading of it in Morocco, of all places, as a benefit for my friend Rob Ashford," Ferguson revealed. "It went really well, so we're looking at doing something with that play."

The one-man play originally premiered on Broadway in 1989, with Robert Morse as Capote, who went on to win the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show. He reprised his role in the 1992 American Playhouse presentation of Tru, winning the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. The show has not been done on Broadway since. 

Ferguson continued: "It's quite a beast to do. When I did it before, it was a reading, so I held the script. It's a 40-page monologue, basically. So I'm looking for things that scare me," he said, seeming to imply that he would also star in the production.

He also added that he is interested in cutting some material to remove the intermission and bring the running time to 90 minutes. At this point, further details are unknown for the production, including the timeline and whether it may be produced on Broadway or regionally. 

Adapted from Capote's own words, Tru takes place in 1975 in his New York apartment during the writer's final days. Having recognized thinly veiled versions of themselves, Manhattan socialites, including Babe Paley and Slim Keith, have turned their backs on the man they once considered a close confidant after an excerpt from Capote's infamous unfinished roman à clef, Answered Prayers, has been published in Esquire. Alone and lonely, Capote soothes himself with pills, vodka, marijuana, and chocolate truffles, all the while musing about his checkered life and career.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson has appeared on Broadway in On the Town, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Take Me Out, for which he won a Tony Award. Onscreen, he is known for playing Mitchell Pritchett in Modern Family and also hosts the popular podcast Dinner's on Me. In 2025, he starred in Stephen Sondheim's Here We Are at The National Theatre and The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Listen to the full episode of his podcast below: