‘Modern Family’: Sofia Vergara and Julie Bowen Just Reunited

Claire and Gloria reunited for a night of fun and drinks to attend the Baby2Baby Charity Gala. Modern Family alums Sofia Vergara and Julie Bowen posed for a photo that Vergara shared with her 27 million Instagram followers. “Is it cocktail [itsjuliebowen]??” Vergara asked with laughing and kissing-faced emojis. Both were dressed in gowns, with Vergara donning all Black and Bowen wearing a Black and gold ensemble. Vergara’s caption is a nod to Bowen’s famous impersonation of her on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. While speaking with Degeneres at the time, Bowen shared how her Vergarawanted to know if the dress code for taping the daytime talk show would be considered “cocktail” so that she’d showed up in the right attire.

For 11 seasons, they starred alongside one another in the ABC family comedy. In the early seasons, Gloria tried her best to get Claire to like her as Clarie struggled to accept her sexy and young stepmother. But within a few seasons, they formed a close bond. Claire was known to mock Gloria’s accent in early episodes. And Bowen continued to do so at times in interviews. Modern Family was created by Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan. It follows the lives of three diverse family set-ups in suburban LA, linked by patriarch, Jay Pritchett. Lloyd and Levitan came up with the concept of the series while sharing stories of their own family dynamics. It ran from 2009 to 2020.  

Ironically, Bowen almost didn’t take the role. “I almost didn’t do it,” she told Vergara. “I wanted to, but I was so pregnant with the twins during the audition that process and then would just bring me in and stare at my stomach — I think that they maybe legally couldn’t say like, ‘What’s that about?’ And I think they thought I was so large that I was going to give birth at any minute and then I could do the show after, but instead they were just playing it very like, ‘Mhmmm.’”

She continued: “I’d go home and cry and think I’m never going to get this — the greatest job in the world — so I took myself out of first place for it, because there was another job that was auditioning where the lady was pregnant.”