Modern Family’s Aubrey Anderson-Emmons is considering reprising her role of Lily Tucker-Pritchett on the hit ABC show.
The actress — who admitted to discussing the idea with TV dad Jesse Tyler Ferguson — told DailyMail.com in an interview published on Tuesday, February 20 that Modern Family had “a good ending,” but remains optimistic about a spinoff under one condition.
“They really haven’t said much about anything,” Anderson-Emmons, 16, said. “But my mom asked me, ‘Would you want to do that?’ and I thought about it and I don’t know.”
She continued: “I think maybe if it happened — and probably if it did happen — I would be out of high school. So honestly, that would be fine with me, but I want to stay in high school because I only have less than a year and a half left.”
“I’d definitely be interested if the script was good and the dads were on board, but school is my priority right now unless something great comes along,” she added.”I feel like the finale left possibilities and I think that’s why people are always talking about a spinoff of the Tucker-Pritchard family.”
As the adopted daughter of Mitchell and Cameron — played by Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet, Anderson-Emmons joined the cast of Modern Family in 2011 at the age of four in the show’s third season.
After Cameron got his dream job, he and Mitchell — along with their kids Lily and Rexford — faced the hard choice of moving to Missouri in the series finale, which aired in April 2020.
In June 2022, Ferguson revealed that a Modern Family spinoff script had been written but wasn’t picked up by ABC.
“The script’s out there and it’s very good. So, you know, who knows? If someone wants to produce it, maybe,’ he told Entertainment Tonight at the 2022 Tony Awards.
Anderson-Emmons told DailyMail.com that she “didn’t even know about it until it had been dead for quite a while because the kids are usually the last to know,” adding that she’s “really eager to get back to work as an actor” and speaks to Ferguson often.
“I was just asking Jesse for advice the other day,’ she said. “He’s probably who I am most in contact with from, like, the show. We’re probably the closest out [of] all the people that I know from the show more personally.” (The Santa Monica native stopped acting after the last episode.)
“I think a lot of people think that being on a TV show or like being on a set with people is fun all the time, especially for kids, and people are always like, ‘Wow that must have been the most amazing experience of your life,’ and it was an amazing experience and it’s built who I am, but at the same time people have to understand it’s work,” she explained.
“We’re there for work, and things get serious every now and then and that’s fine,” she said, adding, “especially for the kids since we’re doing a lot. We’re doing table reads, we’re doing school, we’re doing a lot of things, and it can get really, really stressful and a little bit chaotic, but that’s just how it is.”
Modern Family also starred Sarah Hyland, Ariel Winter, Nolan Gould, Sofía Vergara and Ed O’Neill.
