Exclusive: Julie Bowen Reveals Her Ideal Ending for ‘Modern Family’

Ask Julie Bowen about her perfect ending for Modern Family and you get an answer you might not expect.

“Obviously a Thelma & Louise-style ending, driving off a cliff,” the Claire Dunphy actress joked during an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com in April while filming a Mother’s Day surprise with Hallmark and Improv Everywhere.

Getting serious, Bowen, 48, admitted she has “no idea” how the longtime series, ending next year after Season 10, should make its exit.

“It makes me feel a little sick. It’s like asking me what the end to me and [sons] John and Gus and Oliver would be. I’m like, ‘Why would you say that! It’s never going to end!’” she told PopCulture.

After a moment of thought, Bowen decided she’d like the Dunphy family to eventually come full circle. “There’s something about babies that everybody loves, and I don’t know, we’ve got three options to get pregnant,” she said. “Maybe something like that.”

The ending of the hit show is obviously going to be emotional for fans, who have followed the Dunphys, Pritchett-Delgados and Tucker-Pritchetts for nearly a decade so far.

Going into the last season, Bowen praised the writers of the ABC series, who have turned out so many storylines for the beloved characters and continue to do so.

“[The final season] is going to be extra special, because we get to wrap things up,” Bowen told PopCulture.

But fans won’t be the only ones bidding the show farewell with tears in their eyes.

“Oh my Lord, are you kidding? I am going to be beside myself,” Bowen told PopCulture when asked if the series finale will be a bittersweet one.

She joked that she keeps getting worked up during the filming of the final season, thinking, “This is our last first table read. This is our last second table read.”

After all, she’s formed her own family during the years of filming, growing not only as an actress, but as a person.

“This has been such a special, special time. I had babies in the beginning and now they’re going to be going into third grade and sixth grade,” she told PopCulture. “I got to stay in Los Angeles and work with the most lovely, wonderful, creative people. It truly is my other family, and I can’t really conceive of them not getting together a bunch of times a week in a fake house. … It’s going to be very hard to not have that.”

And while Bowen is saying goodbye to her role as Claire, she still has plenty of mothering to do in her real life, which is where her partnership with Hallmark and Improv Everywhere comes in.

Placing a 12-foot Mother’s Day card in the middle of a Los Angeles park ahead of the holiday, Bowen helped surprise unassuming moms ahead of the holiday with words of affirmation from their loved ones. She even shocked her own mom with a sweet personal note!

“She does not necessarily like to be the center of attention, so she was a little subdued,” Bowen said of her own mom’s reaction, “but I think the fact that it’s not actually Mother’s Day … genuinely surprised her.”

She admitted, “I never made a big enough deal about Mother’s Day. I never got why everybody made such a big deal until I became a mom, and then I was like, ‘Oh yeah!’ So, I wanted to thank her for teaching me to be a mom to my kids.”

Modern Family airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.

Photo credit: ABC