Modern Family was one of the biggest sitcoms of the 2010s and fans still binge-watch the wholesome family show on the regular today.
While it ran for 11 seasons over 11 years, there is one key detail producers never explained.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who starred as Mitchell Pritchett in the long-running TV show, revealed the omission on a recent episode of his Dinner’s On Me podcast.
Watch the video above.
READ MORE: Billy Joel’s wife gives update on his life-changing diagnosis
The show famously follows a mockumentary format with a camera crew following the extended family’s every move and the characters speaking directly to the camera in regular confessionals.
However, the existence of the film crew following the Pritchett and Dunphy families was never explained in the show.
”[The show] was a mockumentary, although we never explained what this was,” Ferguson said in conversation with his podcast guest Wendie Malick.
READ MORE: Miley Cyrus reveals medical condition that prevents her from touring
“In a very early version of Modern Family, they had written in a character of a foreign exchange student that had stayed with Mitchell, my character, and [Julie Bowen’s] Claire when we were young and he was coming back to do a documentary about this family he lived with when he was a kid and the title of it was My American Family.
“They ended up cutting that character and then renaming it Modern Family.”
Ferguson continued to explain that while this backstory was cut, the in situ camera crew remained.
For a daily dose of 9honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.
“The construct of it still being a mockumentary was there but we never explained why,” Ferguson shared.
The mockumentary style was a big focus of the early seasons among cast and crew, Ferguson explains, but it became less and less obvious throughout the seasons.
”In the early seasons we would really try and hold onto the reality that we were with a film crew,” Ferguson explained.
Modern Family cast: See their photos from 2009 and 2020
“If you watch early episodes you’re like, ‘Oh, it’s actually feasible that this is a reality show’ and then seasons five, six it’s just like we’re opening our doors, coming home from getting groceries and there’s just a camera crew in our house and no one questions that.”
By the time Malick guest-starred in season 11, she said, “I don’t even remember thinking about that.”
READ MORE: What’s going on with the Beckhams?
Modern Family, which premiered in 2009, followed a similar format to widely-popular The Office US and UK, which premiered in 2005 and 2001 respectively.
While The Office franchise focused on the reality of the film crew being actual characters in the fictional reality, Modern Family strayed away from portraying the existence of an actual camera crew and rather used it as a filming technique.
Several other sitcoms like Parks and Recreation and Abbott Elementary have also utilised the mockumentary format in their own way.
FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.
