template structure for tabbed modal

I'm starting to tie my brain in knots with this one so thought I would ask here.

I need a modal dialog with tabs for 'comments', 'favourites' and 'sharing'. All will have dynamic, AJAX updatable content within them.

I'm using jquery-modal, have MVC set up separately for comments, favourites & sharing, and can get them to AJAX load in separate modals just fine.

What I can't work out is how to trigger the modal to open a specific tab when clicking on 'comments', 'share' or 'favourites' on the page and the load the content from 3 different controllers with their associated views.

Actually thinking about this now, maybe I need a modal controller instead of the separate controllers which loads the three models and manages everything from there? Does that make sense?