Modern Family star Nolan Gould remembers thinking his TV sister Sarah Hyland was old

When youre a kid, everyone seems older. But Nolan Gould used to think his Modern Family costar Sarah Hyland was straight-up old.

“Ill never forget like Sarah coming in one day and being like, Oh my God, I feel so old,” Gould told his other Modern Family costar, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, on a recent episode of his Dinners On Me podcast. “She was like 24, 25,” he continued, “and she was like, Im getting too old for this. I didnt know what she was talking about. And I thought to myself, You are — because I was 16, and I was a jerk.”

Nolan Gould and Sarah Hyland on ‘Modern Family’ in 2009.

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As Gould himself pointed out on the podcast, “I got on Modern Family when I was 10. I got off of the show… I mean it ended when I was 21.” In the early seasons, Gould looked up to everyone — literally. Even though Hyland is only eight years older, that gap in age was a bridge too far for him at only 10 or 11.

“I was like, ‘Look at this old person over here,'” he joked. “And now I’m 25, and I’m like, Oh my God, it’s happening.”

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Gould told Ferguson that it took time to understand that the series he’d been cast in had become a massive hit, and his life, subsequently, was changing in massive ways. “I don’t think I really clocked what was happening until I was like 14 or 15. That’s when I kind of became sentient, and I was like, Whoa! This just fundamentally changed me.”

Gould won his first acting award at only 12 years old, when Modern Family won a Gold Derby TV Award for Ensemble of the Year. The series would go on to become a juggernaut at the Primetime Emmys, winning 22 awards out of a total 85 nominations across its 11-year run.

Nolan Gould and Sarah Hyland on ‘Modern Family’ in 2020.

Bonnie Osborne/getty

As Ferguson noted, Gould “had nothing to compare” the shows success to; whereas actors like Ferguson, Sofia Vergara, and Julie Bowen had been grinding away on other projects for decades before being cast on the show that would make them household names.

Since Modern Family ended in 2020, Gould has appeared in a 2022 episode of Grey’s Anatomy and two films in 2023: the Abigail Breslin-starring drama Miranda’s Victim and the mockumentary The Nana Project.

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Hyland, meanwhile, became the host of Love Island USA in 2022, handing over duties to Ariana Madix in 2024. She also starred in Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin.