Jesse Tyler Ferguson wouldn’t trade his Modern Family family for the world. But now that you mention it, a certain Irish actress does have a certain, unmistakable Claire Dunphy energy…
The sitcom star was shocked to discover on the latest episode of his Dinner’s On Me podcast that the one and only Sharon Horgan, the co-creator, writer, and star of series like Catastrophe and Bad Sisters, nearly won the crucial Modern Family role that eventually went to Julie Bowen.
“Do you know I went in for two auditions for Modern Family?” Horgan asked Ferguson, who professed he didn’t. Horgan explained that she went in for the Modern Family pilot while she was in development on the pilot for the series that would become her breakout hit, Catastrophe, because she was “so sure it wouldn’t go.”
When Horgan revealed that the role she read for was the loving, loyal, type-A matriarch of the Dunphy family and sister to Ferguson’s Mitchell Pritchett, the actor responded in amazement, “Oh! You went in for it to play Claire? This entire time I thought you were auditioning for a guest role. ‘Tell me something about the character you auditioned for,'” he mocked himself saying, while impersonating Horgan’s humble response: “‘Oh, her name is Claire.’ Okay!”
Ferguson marveled that it’s “so funny, because when I was watching some episodes of Pulling, which was your first show, and I was like, ‘You and Julie have the same energy about you.'” Horgan gushed, “I love her so much,” adding, “She’s great, but everyone in the show is great. I mean, it’s like a master class of comedy acting.”
Claire has not only become the signature role of Bowen’s career, but the actress’ performance made her among the cast’s most decorated members at the Emmys, with two back-to-back Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series trophies in 2011 and 2012.
Catastrophe also made Horgan into a star, though not of the same type born on a series that grew to the size of Modern Family, she estimated.
Dan MacMedan/WireImage
The cast of ‘Modern Family’ at the 2014 Emmys
“A lot of my earlier stuff was what you might call cult hits, which means nobody really watched them,” she joked, reasoning that’s why “I always had this attitude that that’s what I like to make. I just like to make stuff that, if you like it, you like it. But actually, my big ambition was always to make something that was really good and funny, that millions of people watched.”
Modern Family became one of Horgan’s touchstones: “One of those shows that I thought, Somehow, they’ve managed to hit the jackpot with the demographic where everyone at every age will want to watch that show.“
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Despite her dreams of mass appeal, Horgan’s still unapologetic about creative decisions she’s made that have polarized her viewers. Pointing to the shocking path her Bad Sisters character Eva embarked upon in the Apple TV+ series’ second season, Horgan reflected during EW’s Awardist Drama Actors Roundtable in May, “I swear to God, that got such a — to me — surprising reaction.”
“I always wanted to create a love story that people sort of, despite themselves, rooted for,” she explained. “Like that doesn’t seem right, but she’s been alone for a long time and maybe this is a good thing. But people didn’t like it at all.”
You can listen to the rest of Horgan and Ferguson’s conversation on Dinner’s On Me above.
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