Julie Bowen Didn’t Think She Was Funny Enough for ‘Modern Family’

Julie Bowen didn’t suppose she was humorous sufficient to land Fashionable Household, the actress stated this week.

“I used to be like, ‘I can’t inform a joke, I’m not humorous,” Bowen recalled throughout an look on The Three Questions with Andy Richter.

The actress performed Claire Dunphy on Fashionable Household, which ran for 11 seasons from 2009 to 2020 and is broadly considered considered one of this century’s greatest sitcoms. Because of this, Bowen is well-known for her comedy chops as we speak.

However, the actress virtually didn’t audition for the function. On the time she instructed her workforce, “Don’t give me these three-jokes-a-page sort of issues.”

Fortunately, her managers pushed again and instructed her, “ what? Helen Hunt isn’t humorous.” Hunt charmed audiences as Jamie in Mad About You, which ran for seven seasons within the Nineties after which returned for an eighth in 2019.

“I stated, ‘[Helen Hunt] simply gained like 5 Emmys,” Bowen recalled, to which her managers responded, “Sure. So she’s humorous another way. She’s not three-jokes-a-page humorous. And but she is wildly humorous. Attempt to be Helen Hunt.”

When Richter stated that Bowen will need to have finally discovered her humorous bone, she stated: “You’ll discover I didn’t do too many jokes. I fell down loads.”

The actress went on to say she felt she was higher on dramedy exhibits, like Ed. “Ed was throughout when dramedy was a factor,” she stated. “There was like Ally McBeal on the time. These had been hourlongs with like, the place there’d be massive preventing scenes after which there’d be good heat, humorous scenes. And all issues might exist directly. That was a very long time in the past, and it’s not the identical anymore.”

Elsewhere within the interview, Bowen additionally shared that she was certain she wouldn’t get the Fashionable Household job as a result of she was pregnant when she auditioned. “I didn’t suppose I acquired Fashionable Household as a result of I used to be so pregnant,” she stated. “I used to be testing for 2 pilots, and I needed Fashionable Household, however the different present, the character was pregnant. And I used to be like, ‘I’ve acquired a shot at that one.’”