Every now and then in an actor's career, if they're lucky, they get to really branch out with a character totally different from what they usually play.
And you pretty much can't get a better example of this than Eric Stonestreet, best known as lovable gay dad Cam on Modern Family, playing a bloodthirsty serial killer.
But that is indeed Stonestreet's next role as he joins the Showtime drama Dexter: Resurrection's upcoming season—and Modern Family fans are shook.
Modern Family was of course a lighthearted, fairly squeaky clean family comedy just like its title suggests, and Stonestreet's character was arguably the squeaky-cleanest of all of them—a flamboyant bear of a man who was so in touch with his softer side that he often got on the nerves of his sardonic husband Mitchell, played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson.
Now, he'll be playing the serial killer at the center of Dexter: Resurrection, the latest iteration of the blood-spattered franchise popularized in the 2000s by star Michael C. Hall.
That show centered on Hall's character Dexter Morgan, a vigilante serial killer who hunted down murderers who evaded justice.
Stonestreet will play a Kansas City man, Al, who is suspected to be the serial killer terrorizing the city. He'll be joined on the show by Krysten Ritter, Neil Patrick Harris, Peter Dinklage and Uma Thurman, among many others.
But given that he's best known as silly, cuddly Cam, the internet couldn't help but laugh about the contrast.
This isn't Stonestreet's first foray into the dark side, however. He has appeared on American Horror Story and played a similarly sadistic criminal to his Dexter: Resurrection character on The Mentalist.
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