Created by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, the team behind Frasier, it’s a show that is pushing television boundaries and, in its own quiet way, changing political viewpoints. Right wing conservatives, including Mitt Romney and his wife, are said to be fans and, in a recent survey, Republicans ranked the show third in a list of their top 15 shows, while Democrats didn’t rank it at all. All rather surprising, given the inclusion of a gay couple with a baby as one of the family units.

“This is probably a little overwrought, but I do actually think the writers are making the world a better place,” Burrell says earnestly. “It’s one of my favourite things about the show. I love it when I talk to conservatives and they’re describing all three couples, and they never mention that one of them is gay. That’s the brilliance of the writing. In a completely unaggressive, apolitical way, they are showing this couple as completely normal dealing with ordinary stuff. The banality of it is the most revolutionary thing.

“I think if you turned around and asked that same conservative person how they felt about gay marriage, that probably hasn’t changed for them, but the seed has been planted none the less. It’s progress and it’s the coolest thing.”

Source: The Telegraph

Ty Burrell at the New York Television Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Emmy darling Modern Family topped the TV nominees for the 18th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, which were unveiled Wednesday morning.

The ABC comedy collected five nominations for best comedy ensemble, acting mentions for Ty Burrell, Eric Stonestreet, Julie Bowen and Sofia Vergara. The series from Christopher Lloyd and Steve Levitan had a pair of acting noms in both categories for the second year running, with Burrell subbing for co-star Ed O’Neill and Bowen breaking into the mix this year.

Read the full story on Hollywood Reporter

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Freshmen breakouts Modern Family and Glee dominated early at the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards Sunday as Eric Stonestreet and Jane Lynch won statuettes.

Modern Family’s Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd also won best writing for a comedy series for the ABC hit’s first episode, “Pilot.”

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When Modern Family returns to ABC on September 22 for its second season little Manny (Rico Rodriguez) will be front and center. Executive producers Christopher Lloyd and Steve Levitan tell TV Guide Magazine he’ll go on his first date—his first on-screen date, that is.

“I don’t think it’s his first date,” says Levitan, Adds Lloyd, It’s his first serious girlfriend. The irst one he really feels he’s falling in love with.” The story line might end up being less about Manny than it is about his mother.

Read the rest of the story on TVGuide.

Paste magazine selected the 10 best sitcoms on TV right now , and of course one of them is Modern Family. Here is what Paste had to say about the show:

The funniest debut season of a sitcom in a long while belongs to Modern Family on ABC. The story of three inter-related families works because its characters seem familiar to life but fresh to the screen. Not that the show is above archetypes: There’s the rebellious teen seduced by popularity, the beautiful Colombian second wife, the trying-too-hard-to-be-cool dad, the patriarch who doesn’t like to show affection, the flamboyantly gay boyfriend. But it’s not taken long for TV veterans Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan to let each character’s uniqueness flourish through the myriad relationships within the family.

It’s these relationships that make even a completely messed-up family a valuable thing. No matter how bad things get in this Modern Family, it always beats the alternative of not having each other. They’re flawed individuals, offering only broken bits of love to one another, but that’s more than enough to cling to. As Dylan, the boyfriend of Claire’s oldest daughter so sweetly an wisely said—before breaking into a song about Haley with the lyrics, “I just want to do you, do you” in front of the family—“You’re reaching out, trying to hold on to something awesome… Haley’s got the kind of confidence that you get from having a family like this that’s passionate and accepting of hot foreigners and gay dudes and nutty people—you know, family that actually loves each other.”

“Modern Family” co-creator Christopher Lloyd told THR that the show’s heavy use of Apple’s iPad wasn’t paid product placement and explained how the episode came about.

Said Lloyd:
“In fact, there was no product placement. This was widely assumed, and everybody was wrong. We wanted to do a show about Phil getting very excited about a new product and it seemed the perfect one to use, since it was debuting [April 1]. We approached Apple about getting their cooperation (using the product, for example, and they are notoriously secretive about their products prior to their being launched) and they agreed and gave us a few other small concessions. But there were no stipulations as with normal product placement, i.e. we give you X dollars and you have to feature our product such-and-such a way and say such-and-such nice things about it. We are not angels — we have made those agreements with other companies. But that was not the deal with Apple. It was all story-driven.”

The cast of ABC’s hit comedy, Modern Family, will appear on stage in a panel about their characters and the show on February 26, 2010.

IN PERSON

Steven Levitan, Creator/Executive Producer
Christopher Lloyd, Creator/Executive Producer
Ed O’Neill, “Jay Pritchett”
Sofía Vergara, “Gloria Delgado-Pritchett”
Julie Bowen, “Claire Dunphy”
Ty Burrell, “Phil Dunphy”
Jesse Tyler Ferguson, “Mitchell Pritchett”
Eric Stonestreet, “Cameron Tucker”
And additional members of the cast and creative team

Tickets: here.

Movie Line has an interview with Modern Family‘s Steven Levitan. Here are some interesting Q&As:

How is running Modern Family different than the shows you’ve run in the past? How have you modified the process?
Well, I’m running it with Christopher Lloyd, so that’s automatically different. We’re sharing the leadership so we have to constantly check in with each other and sometimes battle it out, you know, “Which way are we going to go here?” But otherwise, you hope to make fewer mistakes with time but there are always new mistakes to be made. I’m not as freaked out by all of this as I was at the beginning. It’s becoming more natural to me. We’re just trying to get as far ahead as possible. I always say, that breaking stories is like Indiana Jones and the big ball. You try to get as far ahead as possibly but by the end of the season, that boulder is right behind you.

How long does it take to shoot an episode?
Five days.

Did you have a sense while writing the pilot that ABC was the best place for the show?
We wanted to do a show about family and we thoughtABC was the right place for it. We pitched it around and several people wanted it. ABC wanted it the most and we took it there. We’re not really good at filling orders. We feel like it’s got to come from our hearts and what we want to write about and then you find the right place for it.

And when you pitched it, did you already have the script?
Actually, for the first time ever, for me, I did a Key Note presentation on the computer because we had so many characters. I thought it would be too confusing otherwise for people to keep it all straight. So I used actors that I wanted or liked or pictures of people that looked like what was in our heads and we took it in and said, “This is our show,” and did a five minute Key Note.

Wow. A PowerPoint.
Yeah, the Mac version of PowerPoint. It was cool. We pitched it three places and three places wanted it. It worked.

The biggest concern was, where does this have the best chance of succeeding. ABC, NBC and CBSwanted it. We didn’t pitch it at FOX. And Steve [McPherson] really wanted it and you know, he’s an old friend, and the series just felt like ABC.