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For 11 seasons on ABC’s beloved sitcom Modern Family, fans knew and loved actress Julie Bowen as the character Claire Dunphy. But on a recent episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast Dinner’s on Me, Judy Greer revealed that she actually turned down an audition for the role of Claire.
“I was like, ‘I think I’m not going to audition for it.’ I was really torn about it, but I ended up obviously not,” Greer told Ferguson, who played Claire’s younger brother Mitchell Pritchett on Modern Family. “Who knows if I would have even gotten it anyway? I was just like, ‘I don’t know if I want to be America’s mom yet.’”
The actress, who’s best known for playing supporting roles in popular 2000s films such as 13 Going on 30, What Women Want, and 27 Dresses, explained that she was weary to join in on a family sitcom while playing a matriarch because it “felt so limiting compared to what I was doing already.”
“In addition to just the perception of who you are as an actor, it’s lifestyle too,” she said. “I was like, ‘Well, I like traveling a lot, and I like doing all these movies, and I like going to all these places, and I like meeting all these people.’”
Greer said she was hesitant to work on the television series Modern Family because she was in her 30s at the time, and said she was already playing characters who were mothers and she didn’t want to get typecast.
“In a movie, people kind of see it and then they forget,” she said. “In a TV show, it’s just like, you’re a mom. That’s it.”
Modern Family’s epic television run lasted from 2009 through 2020, earning high ratings, 22 Emmy awards, and amounting to 250 episodes. Bowen also won two Emmys for her performance as Claire.
“I loved that job, and I love working, but I’ve always thought, if Claire Dunphy is the last job I ever had, then I lived a good life,” Bowen recently told People.
