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One of the (many) shows I binged over the course of the pandemic was Modern Family. I had watched it when it was first on, but dropped out around season five. The first few seasons I think are truly exceptional, but it was still really enjoyable to go through the whole series. By all accounts, the cast has remained tight since the show ended in 2020. Jesse Tyler Ferguson officiated Sarah Hyland’s 2022 wedding, and just last fall Sofia Vergara hosted Jesse and Julie Bowen in her home (a night that included Insta snaps from her closet which I think is the same size as my apartment living room). Jesse also had Sarah Hyland on his Dinner’s on Me podcast last summer, and now he’s welcomed another Modern Family vet to the pod. Ed O’Neill appears on a new episode, where he describes that age-old life question he faced as a youth: whether to go into acting or the mob.
During a conversation with his former Modern Family costar Jesse Tyler Ferguson on the latest episode of Ferguson’s Dinner’s on Me podcast, the veteran actor, 77, recalled how he considered a life of organized crime in the late ‘60s before heading to New York to pursue a career in acting.
As the Married … with Children alum explained, he was tempted because he’d just been cut from the Pittsburgh Steelers, and he was desperately looking for a job in his hometown in Ohio.
“I had friends whose fathers were in organized crime,” said O’Neill. He then proceeded to tell the story of how a “dear friend” from his childhood, Jim, took him for a drive and made him an offer he almost couldn’t refuse.
“We’re driving and he said, ‘How you doing? You got cut, you got no money,’” O’Neill told Ferguson, 48. “I said, ‘No, I’m broke. I don’t know what I’m gonna do, Jim.’”
After the two stopped at a “fancy” bar where Jim had a suspicious conversation with the bartender about whether the latter had seen an “old friend” of Jim’s, “We left and [Jim] said, ‘You can do this kind of stuff for me … I’ll protect you,’” O’Neill recounted. “‘I’ll give you easy stuff. Just you collect here. You do that. You run, you drop something off here and there. You may have to lean on a guy, but you’re good at that. You can make some good money.’”
O’Neill’s initial response? “‘Let me think about it, Jim. ‘Cause I might be leaving town to pursue this acting thing,’ which he knew about,” the actor said.
And while O’Neill did initially go home and consider Jim’s offer (“I thought, ‘What else am I gonna do?’” he told Ferguson), it was his dad who persuaded him to head in another direction when they had a conversation about it the following day.
“He said, ‘I saw you take a ride with Jimmy … I just wanna ask you a question: Can you do time?’ I said, ‘No,’” the Little Giants actor recalled. “He said, ‘You couldn’t do time. You’d have a hard time being in jail, right?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t think I could do time.’ He said, ‘Okay.’”
O’Neill continued, “I called Jimmy, and I thanked him and I said, ‘I’m going to New York. I’m gonna try this other thing.’”
While he wouldn’t land his first onscreen roles until a decade later, O’Neill went on to have a flourishing acting career in both film and television, notably on the latter with Married … with Children and Modern Family. He has earned numerous accolades, including four Screen Actors Guild Awards and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The ensemble cast of Modern Family, including Ferguson, have even remained close since its conclusion in 2020, after 11 seasons on the air.
I like Ed’s dad in this story. He doesn’t yell or become histrionic. He simply asks his son, in a matter-of-fact manner, to self-assess his own potential for withstanding prison and lets the boy come to the conclusion himself. Take note, parents! Ed could totally develop this into a project. Yes we have Barry, and going further back Bullets Over Broadway, but there’s room for more! Acting vs the mob is a fun dichotomy to play with. At first, superficial glance it looks like tough guys vs softies. But Ed stuck with acting even after 10 years of no screen work, and in 1970s New York no less. That takes some serious mettle! Incidentally, I’ve gone to some classes at the Lee Strasberg Institute, and when exercises ever felt overwhelming we’d steel ourselves and invoke Lee’s Godfather Part II role of Hyman Roth: “this is the business we’ve chosen.”
photos credit: Getty, ROGER WONG/INSTARimages.com, Joe Sutter, PacificCoastNews / Avalon
