Jesse Tyler Ferguson to Star in New York Production of TRU This Spring

Earlier this month, BroadwayWorld reported that Tony Award-winner Jesse Tyler Ferguson purchased the rights to Tru, the 1989 play about writer Truman Capote by Jay Presson Allen. Now, the Modern Family star has revealed that he will be performing in a forthcoming New York production of the solo play.

"I'm almost halfway through learning the play. And I'm trying to learn it before I start rehearsal," he said during a recent episode of his Dinner's on Me podcast. He went on to say that the production will be taking place in New York at some point this Spring. Specific dates and venue information are forthcoming.

Ferguson previously shared that he first did a reading of the play in Morocco as a benefit for director Rob Ashford. "It's a 40-page monologue, basically. So I'm looking for things that scare me," he said at the time, adding that he was interested in cutting some material to remove the intermission and bring the running time down to 90 minutes. 

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. 

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, where he speaks on the show around the 22-minute mark: