2 l April
5 - 11, 2020
Northeast Oregon TV Weekly
The award-winning ABC comedy
“Modern Family” airs its series
finale Wednesday.
BY JAY BOBBIN
‘Modern Family’ bids farewell with award-winning ABC comedy’s finale
Family time is special, but in one case, it’s about to end.
After 11 seasons and numerous awards including Emmys for
outstanding comedy series for each of its first five years plus separate
Emmy wins for co-stars Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell and Eric Stonestreet,
“Modern Family” closes up shop with its last ABC episode
Wednesdvay, April 8. Though it’s been long known that the finale for
the intertwined Pritchett and Dunphy clans was coming, that doesn’t
make the actual ending any easier for cast and crew members who
have been together for, in many cases, over a decade.
“Had we ended it last season, I think it would have probably
revolved around the birth of the new babies,” reflects “Modern
Family” executive producer and co-creator Steven Levitan, “but
since we went past that point, we were in uncharted territory. It’s
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something that we had been thinking about for about a year-and-a-
half, once we knew we were going into Season 11. We talked about
it all the time, potential places that we could end it so that we could
build some things in that led to that nicely.” (One such “thing” was
the characters’ recent trip to Paris.)
Looking back on the history of “Modern Family,” co-star Jesse
Tyler Ferguson – alias the show’s Mitchell Pritchett – cites making
the 2009 pilot episode as forever special.
“I will always remember meeting this group of people for the first
time,” he says. “We all auditioned at separate times, and we were put
together in separate rooms ... but the first time we all came together
in preparation for the big network table read for the pilot, it was an
immediate connection. I remember Sofia (Vergara) giving everyone
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hugs. I was like, ‘This is the nicest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever
met in my entire life, and she gets to play my stepmother. This is
going to be so exciting.’ It all felt very natural very early on.”
Cast regular Vergara has relished bringing the glamorous, comically
word-mangling Gloria Ramirez-Pritchett to life. “It was a gift to land
a show like ‘Modern Family,”’ she notes, “because I never thought
that sounding like this, I was going to be able to get a job that was so
successful, being seen all over the world with a cast so amazing.
“To be able to get all the opportunities that I got, to be able to
expand my brand and do all the business things that I wanted, it
was all a gift to me. I am super-sad that it’s ending, but of course,
I’m looking for the next thing (which, for Vergara, is this summer’s
season of NBC’s ‘America’s Got Talent’) like everybody else.”