legendary Married with Children and Modern Family star Ed O’Neill explains improvisation on the sets
You won some kind of lottery to end up being paired with Sofia Vergara…
Yeah. Isn’t she amazingIJ I call her the forces of nature. When I first met her, it was at a reading session. I looked at her and thought, “Well, I know why they hired her.” And I thought, “I just hope she can act just a little bit.” Then, you know, two weeks later, I thought, “My god, she’s like a lucille Ball or something.”
What about improvisationIJ Because it’s really well written…
We are talking about Sofia. She doesn’t improvise so much as mispronounce, and when she mispronounces, sometimes it’s hilarious what comes out of her. Ty Burrell is very good at it. Julie is pretty good at it. I’m not so good at improvising. I don’t actually like to improvise. I like to keep the separation between church and state. We’ve got a good writing. We try to give them what they write, and then we’ll play around a little bit with things.
What about the kids, how are they with improvisationIJ
The kids hardly improvise because they memorise and you have to make sure it doesn’t sound like it’s memorised. Often times, they’ll speed through because they are already thinking of the next line they know, and it doesn’t sound as if they are making it up as it goes along, which is what you work on with them. Also, there are diction, clarity, vowel pronunciations. It’s really very simple. You just work on basic speech with them. But kids learn fast.
Working with Rico and Sofia, are you more interested about latino cultureIJ
I’ve always been interested. As a kid growing up in Ohio, we had very few latinos. We had Puerto Ricans, a few, and I went to school with a couple of them. I always found it a fascinating culture anyway. I love Flamenco dance and music. I used to watch latino boxers. We used to have a feed on Saturday, a tape delay out of The Olympic in l.A., and they were all Mexican fighters. I could name all the fighters.
Do you remember one of themIJ
I remember all of them! Armando Ramos, Indian Red lopez... Julio Cesar was my favourite fighter. He came a bit later. A good friend of mine, Carlos Palomino was a welterweight champ of the world.
What did you think about the concept of the show when they pitched it to youIJ
Well, when they pitched it to me, I told them I wasn’t interested. They hadn’t written it. And I just told lloyd and levitan, “look, I’ve done my time with half hour. I did 11 years. I don’t want to do any more. But, you know, good luck.” They said, “Will you read it when we write itIJ” I said, “Of course, I’ll read it.” So, a year later, I get the script. And I read it, and I thought, “Oh, god, this is good.” I read it again, and I said, “I’ve got to do it.” So I called and said, “Make the deal.” And they said, “Too late.” They went out to Craig T. Nelson. So I said, “Okay. All right. That’s all right.” You know, I told them I wouldn’t do it. Now I’m not doing it. A week later, they called back my manager and he told me, “Well, they are back to you.” I asked, “WhyIJ They couldn’t make the deal with CraigIJ” Turns out he wanted too much upfront money.” I said, “Well, make the deal. I want to do it.” And he said, “Ed, you’re not even the star of it. It’s an ensemble.” I said, “I know. Make the deal.”
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