Modern Family is one of the best sitcoms of all time and it’s partly because of the cast. The characters are quite relatable, and it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the roles. Julie Bowen’s Claire Dunphy, for example, is certainly a TV mom that parented with an iron fist, having to wrangle not only her three kids but her often goofy husband, but it all came with love. Bowen had the role down perfectly, but apparently, another comedic actress could have nabbed the role.
There are often stories of actors who were in the running to play a role in a film or TV show that wound up being huge, and you always think of the “What if?” In Modern Family’s case, 13 Going on 30 star Judy Greer almost auditioned for the role of Claire Dunphy. She told Modern Family’s own Jesse Tyler Ferguson on his podcast Dinner’s On Me about auditioning for the ABC sitcom after being asked what her connection was to the series, and I can’t stop thinking about how different it would have been:
I think I was asked to audition for Claire. This was a time in my career when I was starting to [portray women who had kids]. … It sounds so silly to say it out loud now, but I'll be honest. In a movie, I would have a kid. And then there was this opportunity to audition where I would have three kids, like one of them in high school, and on a TV show, in success, and you do have to think of these things in success, and obviously, Modern Family was a huge success. In a movie, people kind of like see it and then they forget. In a TV show, it's just like, you're a mom. That’s it.
Considering Modern Family wound up running for 11 seasons, that’s a long time to play a mother for a role. Even Julie Bowen is receiving Mom roles after Modern Family. It’s not an easy role to do, whether real or fake, and it’s something that Greer didn’t want to do after much debate:
I didn’t even want kids. That was not even on the table for me. And I was like, ‘Ah, I think I'm not going to audition for it.' I was really torn about it, but I ended up obviously not. So, who knows if I would have even gotten it anyway, but I was just like, 'I don't know if I want to be America's mom yet.' So I was in my 30s, like early/mid, so I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ And it just felt so limiting compared to what I was doing already. And in addition to just the perception of who you are as an actor, it's lifestyle, too. 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.
Even though Judy Greer is sure she wouldn’t have gotten the role had she auditioned anyway, it’s still something to think about. Another reason why Modern Family went as long as it did is because of the cast’s chemistry and their believability as an actual and relatable family. Greer being on Modern Family would have been interesting to see, whether as Claire or as a different character, but it sounds like she’s not too regretful about not auditioning. And there would only be one reason why she would have auditioned:
And the weird thing is, if I did have a kid, I’d want to be on a show that shot in LA that I was going to be around for all the time. I wasn't ready for it, in and out of my career.
At the very least, it all worked out in the end. Greer wasn’t limited to just one role or project, and Bowen was definitely the perfect person to play Claire and she got a new family out of it as well. Even today, the Modern Family cast remain close. Coincidentally, both Bowen and Jesse Tyler Ferguson spent Thanksgiving in the ER because of their kids, and they shared some sweet support for one another.
Modern Family is always going to be a beloved show with a beloved cast, and it’s very likely that even with one different actor, the show would have been completely different. There’s no way to know what it would have been like with Greer, but fans can watch the show with a Hulu subscription or a Peacock subscription and see just how great it is with Bowen.
