Listen: Jesse Tyler Ferguson Tells Luke Macfarlane How His Dad Just Didn't Get It

Coming out once can be a complex and emotionally charged process. But coming out three times? Jesse Tyler Ferguson told podcast guest and fellow out actor Luke Macfarlane that's what it took for his parents to finally get it, Entertainment Weekly relayed.

Saying that his folks "went through their own process with me being gay," Ferguson, who welcomed Macfarlane to his "Dinner's On Me" podcast on May 13, recalled how "my dad even asked me, while I was doing 'Modern Family,' he's like, 'I just don't always understand why you have played so many gay parts.'"

Ferguson played Mitchell Pritchett, a gay man married to Cameron Tucker (Eric Stonestreet), on the series, which ran for 11 seasons on ABC from 2009 - 2020.

Macfarlane, too, played a married gay man on an ABC series, portraying Scotty Wandell, husband of Matthew Rhys' character Kevin Walker, on the five-season run of "Brothers & Sisters," from 2006 - 2011.

Ferguson told Macfarlane that his father's query "opened up a whole... other level of our relationship, because I had to sort of explain to him why it was important for me to play this role, because, socially, I wanted to be able to portray a gay man on television."

"I felt like it was gonna do wonderful things for the marriage equality movement, which it did," Ferguson added.

But his father's puzzlement also followed no less than three attempts by Ferguson to tell his parents that he was gay, EW noted, referencing comments the actor made to Oprah Winfrey in 2013.

"He recalled that he was 17, 19, and 21 when he spoke to them about the subject," EW detailed.

"The last was, he asked me if I had a girlfriend," EW quoted Ferguson telling Winfrey. "I was like, 'Dad! I'm gay. Do we really have to go back to this every time?'"

Added Ferguson: "It was a process for him as well.... he had to figure out how to deal with having a son that wasn't the ideal son."

Ferguson's dad also had to learn to live with his out son talking about private matters to media outlets.

"We're expected in this industry to go on talk shows and talk about our personal life and to, you know, expose parts of ourselves for roles," Ferguson said to Macfarlane before adding that "it's still a hard thing for him to understand," EW relayed.

"If I go on a talk show and tell a story about the family, it's like, 'Why did you have to share that?'" Ferguson added. "And I was like, 'Well, because it's a charming story about my life, and I'm just sharing a little bit of myself with people who wanna know something about me.'"

Listen to the two out actors in conversation below.