Ty Burrell was the first choice to play Phil Dunphy — and then he wasn’t. In the book “Modern Family: The Untold Oral History of One of Television’s Groundbreaking Sitcoms,” co-creator Steve Levitan revealed that the part of the awkward Dunphy patriarch was written specifically with Burrell in mind, but that ABC bosses did not agree with the casting choice. “They were very resistant to him. They thought they could find someone flashier and better,” Levitan said.
In an interview with Vulture, Levitan said that after going to the network to pitch Burrell for the role, he found that executives “weren’t big fans” of Burrell’s style. They ended up auditioning more than 200 other actors for the part and said they didn’t want to see Burrell again. Even Burrell agreed that his audition was weak. “I had no experience with sitcoms at all,” he said in the “Modern Family” book. “From my perspective, my audition was too broad. I was nervous. It was a tight, stagy performance, which I take full responsibility for. I wouldn’t have given me that part either.”
While Burrell was told that “it was basically over” for him, Levitan had a brainstorm. Instead of having him do yet another audition on stage, he’d shoot a scene that would show what the mockumentary style of “Modern Family” would look like. He ultimately had Burrell film a father-son scene with a child actor, and the network loved it. It took 12 weeks for Burrell to land the role that would define his career, (per Entertainment Weekly). In 2012, Burrell told Collider that “Modern Family” was “a really once-in-a-lifetime job.”
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