Sarah Hyland endeared herself to a generation of viewers as Haley Dunphy on Modern Family, but she says the show’s creative team wasn’t convinced she was right for the role at first.
In an interview with BuzzFeed published on Tuesday, the actor said that network executives initially felt she was “too old” to play Haley, who was 15 at the start of the first season in 2009.
“Originally, they didn’t want to see me for Modern Family because I was 18 and Haley’s character was 15,” Sarah recalled. “They were like, ‘She’s too old’.
“And at the time, my agent’s assistant fought for me to get in the room. She was like, ‘She doesn’t look 18 years old, I promise you! She looks very, very young!’”
Though many actors will record their audition on video, Sarah opted instead to be “pre-read” for the show’s cast, at which point casting director Jeff Greenberg was brought in.
Jeff Greenberg, she said, “had me read, and then he was like, ‘OK, now do it again, and now I’ll put it on tape’” ― after which she was permitted to meet with the show’s creators, Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan, and director Jason Winer.
Modern Family went on to be a critical and commercial smash, winning 22 Emmys over the course of its 11-season run.
Elsewhere in her BuzzFeed interview, Sarah said she experienced a fair share of personal challenges during her time on the show, as did many of her younger co-stars.
“I was 18 when I started, I was there through all of my 20s. The kids were 10 or 11 when they started the show,” she said.
“So for them to go through puberty in front of millions of people — and for myself, a lot of traumatic things happen to women when they’re in their 20s.”
She went on to note: “Most of the time you don’t have to put on a smile and go to work and do it in front of millions of people — everyone has to smile and go to work. I think that was probably the most challenging part, was all of the lows in my 20s that I experienced.
“I had to very much put them to the side and leave it at the door whenever I went to work, because I just refused for anything to affect my job.”
These days, Sarah stars alongside Adam DeVine in Pitch Perfect: Bumper In Berlin, and serves as the host of Love Island USA.
In August, she’ll celebrate her first wedding anniversary with former Bachelor in Paradise star Wells Adams, whom she married last year.