Sarah Hyland was a fixture on the small screen for more than a decade thanks to her role as Haley Dunphy on Modern Family. ABC was her network home for all eleven seasons of the hit comedy, and now Hyland is returning to her old ABC stomping grounds for what could be her next big show. The new project will see Hyland team up with more ABC veterans for something completely different than anything else on network television.
The Modern Family alum will star in a fairytale drama pilot called Epic, and it hails from a team that knows how to bring fairytale whimsy to primetime: Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis of Once Upon a Time fame. Deadline reports that Sarah Hyland will play a princess by the name of Rose, who is about to marry her Prince Charming.
Much like Snow White from Once Upon a Time, marrying Prince Charming won't happen without a hitch. Unlike Snow from OUAT, Rose might not marry her prince at all, as her prince will have second thoughts. As a response, Rose will try to preserve her dreams and find herself open to an unexpected world.
If it receives a series order beyond the pilot, Epic will be a romantic anthology series aiming to reinvent fairy tales for new audiences, so it's possible that Sarah Hyland's Rose won't be the kind of princess who wears ballgowns and tiaras, but only time will tell. The project also stars Brittany O'Grady of Star fame and Eleanor Fanyinka of Pure and Holby City.There is no news just yet about who might play Rose's Prince Charming, but Epic is currently only in the pilot stage, and the pilot is reportedly not in consideration for the 2021 fall TV season.
The Once Upon a Time creators will be joined by Brigitte Hales, who wrote for their former fairytale show, which ran for seven seasons and came to an end in 2018. Adam Horowitz, Edward Kitsis, and Hales will all serve as executive producers on Epic. James Griffiths, who has directed episodes of other ABC series like Stumptown and A Million Little Things, will direct the pilot.
There is no guarantee at this point that the pilot will receive a series order, but the project has already brought together some ABC veterans with plenty of experience with hit TV shows. Sarah Hyland took to Twitter to celebrate the news of her new role, and her spoiler-free gif choice couldn't be more perfect. Take a look:
Epic isn't the first TV project that Sarah Hyland has been attached to since the end of Modern Family, but definitely the first one that has set her up to play a princess. If Epic scores a series order and Hyland makes her debut as Rose, then ABC viewers will presumably see a very different side of her as an actress than they saw on Modern Family. Something tells me that Princess Rose will be quite different from Haley Dunphy!
For now, we can only wait and see if Epic receives a series order. You can revisit Sarah Hyland's previous work on the small screen with all eleven seasons of Modern Family available streaming now on Peacock and on Hulu.
