Julie Bowen Recalls the Press “Being Determined to Pit” Her Against ‘Modern Family’ Co-Star Sofía Vergara
Julie Bowen has opened up about the press trying to push a rivalry between herself and her Modern Family co-star Sofía Vergara.
While appearing on Jennie Garth’s podcast I Choose Me, Bowen recalled the strange experience of the media fabricating a feud between herself and Vergara, who she has remained close friends with. “I felt it on Modern Family. The press kept trying to make me and Sofia sort of Betty and Veronica,” said Bowen.
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Bowen then pointed out that she knows Garth experienced this with the press when she was on 90210. “I know they did that with you and Shannen [Doherty]. I mean, I remember it,” she noted. The Modern Family alum then recalled her surprise at finding out that Garth and Doherty were actually friends after watching a morning show segment of them shopping, realizing that “we’re not getting real life in the press.”
She remembered how with Vergara, the press “were determined to pit us against each other, like we hated each other.”
“There’s this scarcity mindset that there’s only one woman that can be happy at a time,” continued the actress. “I was like, ‘Oh no, I love Sofía. I love how different we are. She is funny and self-effacing and bawdy, and she loves life, and she loves dancing and eating cake and all these things.'”
If anything, Bowen explained, she was in awe of Vergara and admires many of her qualities. “I learned so much from being around her on what it is to be a really powerful, completely-herself woman,” she said. Bowen “found it to be really disappointing on the part of the press” to have that narrative perpetuated, but she “never fed into that.”
While Bowen did try to avoid tabloids, sometimes she would stumble upon them while grocery shopping, finding false stories about feuds between the women. “That’s so crazy; that’s just so ridiculous,” she remembered thinking after seeing the tabloid fodder.
Bowen had previously addressed the fabricated feud on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2016. “Every night I get a call or I get an email that says, ‘So-and-so trash mag will be running a story that you… ‘ this week it was that, ‘You were icy to Sofía Vergara, because you are jealous of her fame,'” she explained. “So I emailed her last night and then we talked. And I’m like, “What should I say?’ Because we’re friends. I’m like, ‘What should I say? You’re funny.’
Vergara responded to the email, “Please just borrow my blouse!” So Bowen borrowed her blouse for Ellen, an off-the-shoulder periwinkle-colored top.
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