Rico Rodriguez Gets Emotional: "Modern Family" Co-Stars Move Him to Tears After Dad's Passing
The actor tells his former onscreen stepbrother that knowing his TV family was there for him "really made my decision a lot easier to for sure come back."
Just like a real family, the Modern Family cast had star Rico Rodriguez 's back through the good times and the bad.
Specifically, on a recent episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson 's Dinner's on Me podcast , Rodriguez opened up about how his fellow castmates made him really emotional after the death of his father in 2017. In fact, Rodriguez, who hadn't even turned 18 at the time, said he wasn't even sure he wanted to return to play Manny again afterwards — but his fellow stars made it worthwhile.
"I was very, very young. And so it was kinda crazy because on the final episode of that [eighth] season was Manny graduating. And there was this really amazing scene between me and Ed," he told Ferguson, referring to Ed O'Neill, who played Manny's stepfather, Jay. "At the end of it, he pours me a little thing of scotch and he's like, 'You know, I think of you as being my kid.' And I'm like, 'You're my dad.' It's really an amazing scene. And that was the last episode, and then we wrapped."
According to Rodriguez, his father, Roy, passed away about two weeks later at age 52 while the show was on hiatus. When it came time to do negotiations for the next season — the first time he had to do so without the help of his father, who he says "always led the charge for us" — Rodriguez hesitated.
"There was a point where I actually thought, you know, I don't know if I wanna come back," he admits. "Because, I don't know, I mean, the patriarch of our family is gone and he was the biggest motivator. He was all of our ideas. So there was a point where I was like, you know what? Maybe I don't wanna come back and I wanna hold off because I don't know if I can."
But, eventually, Rodriguez determined that not returning to the hit sitcom would be "doing [his dad] a disservice," and he thought of his supportive costars, which "really, really made it easier knowing I was coming back to my other family."
At the first table read for season 9, then, Rodriguez recalled, "I stood up there and I looked at everybody and I couldn't help but cry and get emotional because my dad passed in March and then in July, we're starting right up again. And it was like, man, being here, it helps me. It's helping me just because I know how much love you guys have given me over the years. Knowing that I had you guys to be there with, to uplift me, and just have a good time, it really made my decision a lot easier to for sure come back."
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Modern Family aired on ABC for 11 seasons from September 23, 2009, to April 8, 2020.
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