Sarah! Ariel! ‘Modern Family’ Cast Then and Now

Updated March 4, 20232 Mins read171

From the beginning, fans fell in love with the cast of Modern Family — but they sure have changed over the past 13 years. When the series debuted, many of the cast members were so young that they ultimately grew up on screen.

“There’s definitely one season for me when I hit puberty right when we went on break, and then we came back and I had changed but not quite enough,” Nolan Gould said during a panel for the final season in January 2020. “It’s strange having those years broadcast to millions of people. It’s like your home movies, but for everyone to see. I think we were pretty lucky we had such a great fan base that was very supportive of us.”

Ariel Winter, who was 11 years old when the show began, also felt the pressure growing up as a young woman on screen.

“Growing up in front of everybody is difficult. It’s stressful. Millions of people think they can comment on your life,” Winter, now 22, said. “Rico [Rodriguez], Nolan and I changed a lot over 11 years. … The year I had braces was an awful year for me. I went through puberty over the summer. I had other things.”

Sarah Hyland also received a great deal of social media criticism about her changing looks throughout the series. She was 18 when the first episode aired.

“I had a cringeworthy season, not through puberty, but through health things. I had very bad Prednisone face and gained 30 pounds,” Hyland, 29, said. “People love to attack women, especially. I think Ariel is such an amazing woman and has always been so mature and handles it with such grace and poise. I think between the two of us we have gone and attacked it.”

Mostly, the Blind Date actress shared that it was tough since no one was really close to her age.

“I’m kind of in no man’s land between everyone born in 1998 and the next person close to me is Jesse [Tyler Ferguson]. So being in my late teens, early 20s in no man’s land, it was really hard. It’s not painful to look back at, it’s just annoying,” she told reporters at the time. “The way that I move forward is that I will never post a picture from season 4 or 5.”

Scroll through the gallery below to see the entire cast from 2009 to 2020.