‘Modern Family’ star Ariel Winter ‘still best friends’ with TV brother

Ariel Winter’s 11 seasons of Modern Family came with some important relationships.

After all Winter who played Alex Dunphy, was 11 when the show debuted in the fall of 2009, and she was 22 when the final episode aired in April 2020. So she grew up alongside Nolan Gould, the child actor who played her younger brother, Luke, from the time he was 10 to 21.

“I’m extremely close to Nolan,” Winter told PEOPLE in a recent interview. “He plays my little brother, and he and I are still best friends.”

Winter’s character was the brainy middle child of the Dunphy family headed up by parents Phil (Ty Burrell) and Claire (Julie Bowen). Her siblings were spacey younger brother Luke (Gould) and flirty older sister Haley (Sarah Hyland).

As viewers of the ABC sitcom know, it was a smash. With a cast that also included Ed O’Neill, Sofia Vergara, Eric Stonestreet, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, it simply chronicled the lives of an extended family. The show won a staggering 22 Emmy Awards in its run.

“I was 11 when it started. I don’t think I had any idea of if it was going to be successful or not,” Winter said. “I was just like, ‘Oh, awesome, I got a job.'”

She joked that, “What I was so excited for was to get the chance to work with Al Bundy.” In fact, Winter played the granddaughter of O’Neill, who portrayed the shoe-selling character on Married … With Children.

“But once the show started, it was an immediate hit, and it was so exciting to have that opportunity,” Winter said. “And being on the same show for so long? I feel like that doesn’t really happen anymore.”

Being on the series also had a downside, which Winter has discussed previously. It was the public criticism of her changing body, which led to her being unable to look and the mirror and be OK with what she saw.

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“It was just everywhere. It was every headline I read about myself,” she told the magazine. “Grown people writing articles about me saying how I looked terrible or pregnant or like a fat slut. I mean, I was 14. It totally damaged my self-esteem.”

Winter explained that she had moved away from Los Angeles after Modern Family ended. She didn’t leave the entertainment industry — she’s gone on to have several roles since, including voicing the main character in Disney’s Sofia the First: Royal Magic — but she was seeking a different environment.

Winter also now works with the group called Safe From Online Sex Abuse, which aims to protect children from online predators.