Surrounded by family, friends, and cast mates, the Emmy-nominated actor accepted the honor on Tuesday.

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ABC’s Modern Family is ending its second season by adding a new series regular. The name of this pretty young new character: Bridgette. Who is she, you ask? “We’re getting a French bulldog for me to hang out with,” reports Rico Rodriguez (Manny). “She’ll probably be in the last three episodes of the season and then in multiple episodes next year. She’s a very good listener and has fit in very well.” We’ll have to see if Bridgette can deliver the same bark Ed O’Neill‘s previous canine co-star, Buck, brought to Married… With Children.

Source: TV Guide

TV Squad has an interview with Ed O’Neill. Here are some of the highlights:

Was that what attracted you to the role of Jay, because it was so different from Al Bundy, and so different from the dramatic roles you’ve played?
Not so much different from Al, because everything is. But I liked the ensemble nature of the show. That attracted me right away. That the show, there’s a lot of go-to people on the show. So it takes a lot of pressure off, you know? And also it becomes, for me, less boring. You know, you see that person all the time. Especially when you’re doing it every week. It just gets old fast. But this show seemed to have more comedic potential because of the three separate but interconnected families.

So how has Jay kind of changed and shifted since the start?
Well, they’re making him more of a prick. And the thing I look at…

Levitan: Why are we inspired to do that? Where is that coming from? I’m not sure…

(laughing) You know what he’s saying. I think that there’s always a change when the actual actors begin to work with each other on a regular basis and you become friendly… hopefully…you start to like one another. In between takes, you start to share stories and such.

And then there’s this sort of a melding, which I love that process, because that’s like the honeymoon, really. And then things begin to become a little warmer, a little more comfortable. You can do things with a little look instead of, you know what I mean? It becomes more real. That’s how it changes.

First of all, how interesting is it that a lot of the cast of ‘Married… With Children’ are all sprinkled through the primetime schedule? Christina (Applegate) had her own show for a couple years, and now Katey (Sagal) is on ‘Sons of Anarchy.‘
Yes, yes. I like it because it kind of shows that there was some talent in that cast, you know, and some staying power.

Alright, just how is it working with Sofia Vergara in most of your scenes?
I love playing with her. I really love working with her. I think she’s extraordinarily funny. Of course, she’s not hard to look at. I love the idea that the different culture, and it’s hard enough to understand a woman, you know, in a marriage, in the same culture. And you take a Colombian woman, beautiful, young, and so there’s always the surprises for Jay, things he didn’t quite bargain on, I would imagine, when he married her. Obviously, she was beautiful, and that was thrilling. And now that he’s married, there are puzzling aspects.

Modern Family was just included in the “Top TV to watch in 2010″ list of the Australian magazine Brisbane Times. Here’s what they say about Modern Family down-under:

Modern Family (Ten)

Concept: The foibles of an extended American family, including neurotic siblings (she has an excruciating husband and wild kids, he has a gay partner and adopted baby daughter), their dad, his new Colombian wife and stepson, are captured in a documentary.

Star factor: Married With Children’s Ed O’Neill is the name you’ll recognise but the show’s breakout stars are Jesse Tyler Ferguson (gay son Mitchell), Ty Burrell (“I’m the cool dad” brother-in-law Phil) and Rico Rodriguez (dad’s new stepson, Manny).

Verdict: A gentler twist on the discomfort of The Office and Arrested Development, dark enough to entice, not so dark it intimidates and gentle enough to hit its mark as a commercial comedy. An absolute winner.

Ed O’Neill talks about Modern Family, Married With Children, how he got into comedy, his theater work and finally being accepted by his peers among other things. It’s an interesting interview. Click here since the video won’t embed.

Source: Live Journal

‘Modern Family’ makes Sofia Vergara famous after 20 years

The NY Post has an interview with Sofia Vergara; Here are some of the highlights:

‘Modern Family” star Sofia Vergara grew up hating her first name.

“The only person I knew who had that name was my great aunt — and she was old,” said Vergara.

“So, for me, my name was like an old lady.”

Now, plenty of young people are named Sofia in her home country, Colombia, and evidently the 37-year-old beauty had something to do with that.

“Yeah, I became very popular,” she said. “I’ve been working for 20 years!” she adds, like that explains everything.

As the devoted mom to precocious Manny (Rico Rodgriguez) and the trophy wife of Jay (Ed O’Neill of “Married with Children“), she makes Gloria sexy, smart, funny and sweet — no easy job in a medium used to turning Spanish-speaking women into one-dimensional Charos.

She is shocked it all worked.

“I didn’t think people were going to like her because she looks like a gold digger,” she said.

“It’s this young woman with an older guy. I thought, ‘They’re going to hate her!’ But then I started understanding more of the character, and I love her.”

…

But Vergara’s sharp ear failed her spectacularly during a recent appearance on “The View.”

On the show, she was asked about being a young-looking mom. (In real life, she’s the divorced mother of a 17-year-old son, Manolo.)

Vergara joked, “I was 13. I was raped.”

The line sparked criticism, even outrage, online.

“With this accent I’m trying to do jokes on live TV? I mean, of course something’s going to come out wrong,” she said, sighing.

In the spirit of the holidays, we want to hear about your family’s best holiday tradition.

Giveaway rules:

• Submit your “best holiday tradition” by posting a comment to this post.
• 200 words or less.
• Spelling and grammer counts.
• One entry per person; if you submit more than one entry, you will be disqualified.
• Provide an email address in the “Email” field (not in the post itself).
• Giveaway is open to U.S. residents only.
• Giveaway rules are subject to change without any notice.
• This is a family-friendly site; please, no profanities or other inappropriate contributions.

Prize:

• We will pick our favorite entry to receive a DVD of his/her choice from either Married with Children – The Complete First Season or  The Office – Season One

Deadline:

• Submit your story by 12PM PST Sunday 1.3.01

This giveaway is sponsored by SimchaBucks. Want to know how much money to spend on a wedding gift? Try Simchabucks’ wedding gift calculator.

Repeat nominees are the rule of thumb at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, where the eligibility period is the calendar year—rather than the TV season, as is the case with the Emmys. So, new shows are traditionally given short shrift, as they’ve had only a few months of airtime, compared with the whole 12 of the returning series. But this year may be different, considering breakout shows such as “Modern Family,” “The Good Wife,” and “Nurse Jackie” have emerged as contenders.
“This has been an awfully good fall,” says USA Today’s TV critic Robert Bianco. “And I hope the trend would be that some of the new
work from the summer and fall will be recognized this year.” In addition to Bianco, Back Stage spoke with TV scribes Michael Ausiello of Entertainment Weekly; Chris Beachum, contributor to TheEnvelope.com; and Barry Garron of The Hollywood Reporter to get their picks.

Here is were “Modern Family” has potential for nominations:

Male Actor in a Comedy Series

Ed O’Neill of “Modern Family” (“So different from what he was doing on ‘Married With Children’ “) and Garron cites Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the gay son on “Modern Family”: “He’s the best of equals on that show. They’re all very strong, but if I have to single out one actor who owns his part, it would be him.”

Female Actor in a Comedy Series

Garron goes for Julie Bowen of “Modern Family.” “She ends up reacting to a lot of characters, so she may not be the obvious choice, but she provides the glue that holds a lot of episodes together,” he says.
Ausiello Sofia Vergara of “Modern Family.”

Ensemble in a Comedy Series

Ausiello, Bianco, and Garron hope freshman series “Modern Family” will make the cut. “It’s an incredibly strong ensemble. You look at all the characters and the actors and hope some for recognition coming to them for it,” Bianco says. Ausiello agrees: “The one shakeup will be the addition of ‘Modern Family.’ It’s too funny, too critically acclaimed to get ignored.”

The SAG Awards will air Jan. 23, 2010, on TNT and TBS.

[Source: Backstage]

Ed O’Neill, beefy star of ABC sitcom “Modern Family,” says there’s nothing wrong with being overweight.

“I think you’re worse off being too thin,” says O’Neill, 63, who has a black belt in Brazilian-style jujitsu. “To be overweight is not that unhealthy. You see those Midwestern waitresses, strong as bulls, they live until they’re in their 90s. Hollywood is so obsessed with thin that it is a sickness.”

O’Neill, whose most famous TV role was the uncouth Al Bundy on “Married With Children,” is not into low-cal treats. “Health food ice cream?” he asks. “Why even eat it?”

His idea of health food? “I like wine,” he says proudly.

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• Ed O’Neill shines on Modern Family (tvsquad.com)

You know him as Al, former high-school football player* turned women’s shoe salesman, one-time scorer of four touchdowns in a single game, and reluctant head of the Bundy household for eleven years on the hit sitcom Married with Children.

After Married ended, O’Neill receded from the pop-culture spotlight, but he kept right on working, popping up in a few notable roles — like the criminally underappreciated John Hughes movieDutch and his cameo as Glen, the crazy guy who works behind the counter at Stan Mikita’s Donuts inWayne’s World. There were a few forgettable roles in there too: remember Dragnet? Me neither.

But this fall, O’Neill has returned to television on the new ABC comedyModern Family, and he’s back to doing what he does best — playing a wiseass and seemingly miserable patriarch. Shot in a mockumentary format similar to The Office, the show follows three generations of the dysfunctional Pritchett family — O’Neill’s Jay and his young Latina wife, Jay’s son and his partner, Jay’s daughter and her husband and a bunch of grandkids. It sounds like every other beleaguered-dad sitcom. But it’s not. It’s goddamn hysterical.

Read more:http://www.esquire.com/blogs/endorsement/ed-oneill-modern-family-110309#ixzz0Vw36z3VB