'Modern Family' star reveals 'cut' plotline explaining mockumentary style

For 11 seasons, Modern Family charmed audiences with its documentary-style look into the lives of the Pritchett-Dunphy-Tucker clan. But according to Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who played Mitchell Pritchett, there was once a character behind the camera fans never got to meet.

On a recent episode of his Dinner's on Me podcast, Ferguson shared a scrapped detail from the Emmy-winning series which explains why the show was filmed like a documentary.

He explained that an early version of Modern Family had included a foreign exchange student who had once stayed with Mitchell and his sister Claire Dunphy.

“He was coming back to do a documentary about this family he lived with when he was a kid,” Ferguson told his guest, actress Wendie Malick. “And the title of it was My American Family.”

That character never made it to air, but the documentary-style setup stayed.

“They ended up cutting that character and then renaming it Modern Family,” Ferguson said. “But the construct of it still being a mockumentary was there, but we never explained why.”

In the early years, the characters were more aware of a filming crew following them around.

“If you watch early episodes, it’s like, ‘Oh, it actually is feasible that this is a reality show,’” Ferguson noted. “And then season five, six is just, like, we’re opening our doors coming home from getting groceries and there’s a camera crew in our house, and no one questions that.”

Even Malick admitted she didn’t notice the shift. “I don’t even remember thinking about that,” she laughed.