The Modern Family family really was, well, family. Rico Rodriguez, who was the show’s beloved son Manny for all 11 seasons of its run, recently revealed that he got “played” into doing various tasks by Sofia Vergara, who starred as his onscreen mom Gloria, during the show’s time on air.
“It was so funny because, like, I always would be with Sofia. And, you know, I mean, it’s very well known how Sofia, she sometimes goes off the rails,” Rodriguez referred to Vergara’s love of improv on his former costar Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast Dinner’s On Me. “And so she would go off the rails and then she would go, ‘Rico, what’s my line?'”
Rodriguez recalled how he would show up to set knowing everyone’s lines, not just his own, and that ended up inadvertently parlaying into some extra favors.
“I love Sofia, but I, I got played. I got played by Sofia,” he explained on the podcast. “So one time, being the nice person that I am, Sofia was late to the table read, and I was like, ‘I know how she marks her lines on her script’. So I was like, ‘You know what? Let me be nice and and let me mark her script for her.'”
That kindness ended up turning into something more hilarious. “So she gets there, and she’s like, ‘Oh, thank you. Thank you, Rico.’ And touches my cheeks and whatever. And then the next week, she’s on time. So I sit down,” Rodriguez revealed. “I’m marking my sides, and then we start the read, and it comes to Sofia and she goes, ‘Rico, you didn’t mark my script.’ I go, ‘What? I didn’t know I was supposed to. I did it one time because I was nice!'”
It really did become a situation where life was imitating art. “I was literally Manny in that point helping out Sofia,” the actor laughed. “But, you know, I love Sofia, so I had no problem doing it,” he concluded.
Modern Family, which premiered in 2009 and ended in 2020, is currently available to stream on Hulu and Peacock.
Photo by Tony Rivetti via Getty Images.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
