Sarah Hyland Says ‘Modern Family’ Bosses ‘Insisted’ She Wore Heels While on Dialysis and in ‘Excruciating Pain’

Sarah Hyland claimed she was forced to wear high heels despite suffering from gout for a Modern Family scene. Hyland recently spoke to co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson on his Dinner’s On Me podcast about her various health struggles while on set. As a child, the Love Island USA host, who was cast as Hayley Dunphy on the ABC sitcom, was diagnosed with kidney dysplasia, a condition where the kidney does not fully develop in the womb, and underwent two kidney transplants. 

During one of the days of shooting, Hyland, 32, recalled having to assist Ferguson, who played the character Mitchell Pritchett, in pushing a car while on dialysis and suffering from gout. “It was wild,” she said. “[Modern Family bosses] put me in high heels. They had not established my outfit yet, and they insisted that I was wearing heels. And there are pictures of me on the internet in crutches.”

Hyland told Ferguson on his Dinner’s On Me podcast that after being prescribed special pills to ease water retention, she has been diagnosed with gout, a type of arthritis that causes sudden and severe joint pain. There was also another time when she was in “extreme pain” and was “barely able to move” during a shoot for Modern Family because she was “in rejection” from the dialysis treatment she was receiving at the time for her illness. She explained that there wasn’t enough time to return to her trailer in between takes, so she said that in the meantime, “I found a little corner, sat in a chair… and just kind of curled up into a ball.” She said, “I don’t remember a lot of filming, because I was always focused on essentially just surviving and knowing my lines and being there 100% when they yelled action — and then immediately collapsing when they yelled cut.”

In her praises for Ferguson and other members of the team on that particular day, Hyland called attention to the fact that they checked on her and asked if she needed anything. “I remember there was a day on set… I think I was in rejection on dialysis, and I was just in an extreme amount of pain,” she said. Hyland told Ferguson, “You came up to me and very lightly touched me on the shoulder… You were just like, ‘Can I get you anything? Is there anything you need? I’m here for you.’ I just want to let you know how appreciative I am for that, ’cause I know in the moment, I was probably very cold in that place,” she said, explaining that as part of her attempts to distract herself from her pain, she often “ignored” the extent of the pain she was experiencing. 

Hyland explained that she has a “workhorse mentality” that she inherited from her parents, which led her to assert that, “You don’t know when the next job is going to be, and if you don’t work hard and if you complain, you get the boot. So for me, if I ignored how I felt.” While she warned others against following her “not healthy” work ethic, she said it was the “only way” to fight the pain she had been going through.