The cast of Modern Family truly felt like real family. Rico Rodriguez, who played the beloved son Manny throughout all eleven seasons, recently shared that Sofia Vergara—his on-screen mom Gloria—often “played” him into handling extra tasks during the show’s run.
“It was hilarious because I’d always be around Sofia. As everyone knows, Sofia sometimes goes off-script,” Rodriguez said, referring to Vergara’s love of improv, during an appearance on his former co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast, Dinner’s On Me. “She’d go off the rails and then turn to me, ‘Rico, what’s my line?’”
Rodriguez explained that he’d arrive on set having memorized not only his own lines but everyone else’s, which unexpectedly led to him doing a few extra favors.
“I adore Sofia, but I totally got played,” he continued on the podcast. “One time, just trying to be nice—Sofia was late to the table read—I remembered how she marks her lines in the script. So I thought, ‘Let me do her a favor and mark it for her.’”
That thoughtful gesture soon took a humorous turn. “She showed up, thanked me, pinched my cheeks and all that. The following week, she arrived on time. I sat down, started marking my own pages, and as we began reading, Sofia looked at me and said, ‘Rico, you didn’t mark my script.’ I was like, ‘What? I didn’t know I was supposed to! I only did it once to be nice!’”
It truly became a case of life imitating art. “In that moment, I was basically Manny helping out Sofia again,” Rodriguez laughed. “But honestly, I love Sofia, so I didn’t mind doing it.”
Modern Family, which aired from 2009 to 2020, is now available to stream on Hulu and Peacock.
