She grew up in front of millions of viewers over a decade on Modern Family, but now Aubrey Anderson-Emmons is totally rocking her time as a typical teenager.
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00:00She grew up in front of millions of viewers over a decade on Modern Family,
00:04but now Aubrey Anderson-Emmons is totally rocking her time as a typical teenager.
00:10In the very first episode of Modern Family, Mitchell and Cameron adopt a baby girl named
00:15Lily. But Aubrey Anderson-Emmons didn't become a cast member until Season 3.
00:19For the first two seasons, Lily was played by twins Ella and Jaden Hiller,
00:23until they were ultimately recast with Anderson-Emmons. In a TikTok posted in April 2024,
00:28she explained how the opportunity to be on Modern Family came about when she was only four years old.
00:33Her mom, Amy Anderson, is also an actor and comedian,
00:36and her agent encouraged little Aubrey to give it a try.
00:39Yo, like, she should go out for this."
00:42Anderson-Emmons also noted that she had at least two auditions,
00:46and did a chemistry read with Jesse Tyler Ferguson before securing the role.
00:50Following her debut on the show in September 2011, her mom told the star tribute,
00:54Sure, it's weird to think of your four-year-old being a celebrity. What has been nice is that
00:58Aubrey is having fun and really seems to understand that when she's on the set,
01:02she's playing make-believe, she's pretending to be Lily.
01:05As Anderson-Emmons continued working on Modern Family,
01:08keeping up with academics became increasingly difficult. So, Amy Anderson decided to
01:13accommodate her daughter's busy schedule by taking her out of school. As she explained
01:17to Yahoo Parenting in 2014,
01:19We started homeschooling last March. I must say, I went into it reluctantly, thinking,
01:24oh my God, my kid is going to be a freak. But it made sense. She was only attending
01:28her school three days a week during the last five weeks of production, and she felt lost there.
01:32Homeschooling has been more work for me, of course, but it's what's best for our situation."
01:36In Anderson-Emmons' April 2024 TikTok, she praised her favorite studio teacher,
01:40Miss Sharon, who also taught her co-stars, Nolan Gould, Rico Rodriguez, and Ariel Winter.
01:46Of course, the oldest kids all graduated before her.
01:50I was kind of, like, 10 years old and above. Like,
01:54I was doing school with nobody but the set teacher.
01:58While Anderson-Emmons appreciated the extra one-on-one time with Miss Sharon,
02:02her social interactions with other kids became unfortunately limited.
02:07Since Modern Family was so popular, it eventually got to the point that Amy Anderson couldn't keep
02:11up with both her own and her daughter's showbiz schedules, so she ultimately had to choose family
02:16over fame. As she explained to Yahoo! Parenting,
02:19This is not at all how I thought my life would look. For almost 18 years,
02:23I've worked on my acting career and then put everything on hold to help my daughter Aubrey,
02:27which has been hard. I'm not resentful, but I do struggle with it."
02:30Because her daughter was a minor, Anderson was required to remain on set with her,
02:34which made getting enough sleep a little difficult. As she recalled,
02:38I'd catch a red-eye from L.A. to any given city, do a show, come home 24 hours later,
02:43and head straight to the ABC lot on three hours of sleep to relieve Aubrey's sitter.
02:47I'd spend eight hours on set, then go home and still have to do laundry, dinner, bath,
02:51and bedtime. I probably made more money than I ever had before, but it wasn't worth it,
02:56so I decided to take myself off the road.
02:59You might think that growing up in front of the camera is nonstop fun,
03:03but at least for Anderson-Emmons, there's no doubt that Modern Family was a job.
03:07As she explained on TikTok in 2024,
03:10What I think people don't realize was, I was working, and if I wasn't working on the set,
03:14then I had to do three hours of studio school a day, so I had no time to rest except lunch.
03:19Like, you know what I mean?
03:21Still, even though it was a job, there were plenty of things that Anderson-Emmons loved about it.
03:25As she told Girl's Life when she was about to turn 14,
03:28It's been a huge part of my life. Honestly, it's all I'm known for. People recognize me
03:32pretty frequently. They'll say, oh, you look familiar, or you're trying to make a friend,
03:36and they're like, wait, you're that girl from Modern Family. It's weird, you know?
03:40It definitely affects my daily life sometimes, and friends can choose you for the wrong reasons.
03:45In June 2015, an 8-year-old Aubrey Anderson-Emmons and her mom,
03:49Amy, debuted their shared YouTube channel, Food Mania Review. The bio on the channel reads,
03:54We are a mother-daughter team, Amy and Aubrey,
03:57tasting and reviewing snacks, candies, and drinks from all over the world — and beyond.
04:02Okay, maybe not beyond, but we do love treats, so if it's unique,
04:05interesting, and cool, we want to try it.
04:07The mother-daughter duo have filmed themselves sampling everything from
04:10sour candy to New Diet Coke flavors and plant-based candy bars. They've also branched
04:15out to unboxings, song covers, and a vlog series that chronicled their lives during COVID-19
04:21quarantine. One video from July 2017 featured them answering questions from fans. When asked
04:27what inspired them to launch Food Mania Review, Anderson-Emmons replied simply,
04:32I really wanted to make a YouTube channel.
04:34Anderson added that her daughter had initially wanted to make unboxing videos,
04:38but that she didn't want to buy her a bunch of toys.
04:42Food, I would buy, though.
04:44Although Anderson-Emmons had an incredibly busy schedule on Modern Family, she still found time
04:49to support various charitable causes. By the time she was just 7, she'd already contributed to
04:54organizations like St. Jude's Hospital, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and the
04:59Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. In June 2020, she made a video for the I Stand With
05:04Immigrants campaign for Immigrant Heritage Month, in which she explained her mother's background.
05:09My family's immigrant heritage is that my mom came here from Korea.
05:14She was adopted when she was a baby, and she grew up in Minnesota.
05:18Anderson-Emmons also talked about the importance that immigration plays in the United States.
05:23Immigrants are important to American life because,
05:26like, immigrants influence what all is in America. For example, food.
05:31After spending the majority of her childhood on a TV set,
05:34Anderson-Emmons eventually shifted back to traditional schooling. Indeed,
05:38as soon as Modern Family ended, she was able to return to a semi-normal life.
05:42As she recalled on TikTok in 2024,
05:45Once high school happened, I immediately went back into public school, and I've been there since.
05:49Like pretty much any other high schooler, Anderson-Emmons has both her good days and
05:53her bad days. During an appearance on her old TV dad's podcast, Dinners on Me with Jesse Tyler
05:58Ferguson in 2024, she recalled the day that a speaker came to her school to talk about college
06:03essays. But as she admitted,
06:04I'm actually not going to college, probably. Basically, even my college counselor, she was
06:09just kind of like, honestly, Aubrey, you don't really need to go to college if you wanted to
06:12go for theater acting.
06:14And I've asked, like, some other mentors and some actor people who have been to college,
06:17and they said, like, some of them said, go, because, you know, you might be lonely if you
06:22don't.
06:23But then Anderson-Emmons also noted that college takes a lot of time and money,
06:27and she's not sure she wants to follow that path in order to continue her acting career.
06:32Despite starting out on a sitcom and having a comedian for a mom, Anderson-Emmons doesn't
06:36think that the path of a stand-up comedian is the right one for her. As she admitted during
06:40an appearance on The Real in September 2018,
06:43I feel like it's too hard. I'm used to being on a script, so I don't usually write my own material.
06:48And no offense. It makes, like, too little money.
06:52However, Anderson-Emmons seems to have since changed her tune a bit,
06:56as many of her TikToks are comedic lip syncs and sketches. And her videos have clearly resonated
07:01with people, as she has 2.2 million followers on TikTok and 1.3 million on Instagram as of 2024.
07:08Some of that popularity surely has to do with her time on Modern Family,
07:12but if she ever decides she doesn't want to focus on her acting career anymore,
07:15then she's in a solid position to hack it as an influencer.
07:19In addition to her TV work and TikTok bits, Anderson-Emmons is also the frontwoman of a
07:24music group named Oktober. The Los Angeles-based band is slowly building its fan base, and they
07:29even managed to book a gig at a bar in Hollywood called The Bourbon Room in November 2023.
07:34Anderson-Emmons has also demonstrated her musical talent on her Instagram.
07:38She's performed her own compositions on the acoustic guitar, as well as some covers.
07:42Although Oktober is a young band currently made up of high schoolers, there's no doubt
07:46that they have the potential to go far someday with such a multi-talented lead singer.
07:51So stay tuned for that if you would like."
07:54If you've been a fan of Modern Family since the beginning,
07:57then it's probably a little overwhelming to see how grown-up Anderson-Emmons has become
08:01now that she's in high school. There's no doubt that she's been holding her
08:04own during this transitional period in her life, especially if she's been following her own advice.
08:09As she told Girl's Life in 2021,
08:11"...don't let people change you. Express yourself how you want to express yourself,
08:15not the way someone else does. If it's not hurting anyone, it doesn't matter.
08:18Don't let people tell you what to wear or what to do with your life, just be you."
08:22And if you can believe it, Anderson-Emmons even has a high school sweetheart now.
08:26Her boyfriend, Phoenix Reed, is a fellow musician who's in a band called Sweet Silver.
08:31The two appear to have been dating since at least January 2022,
08:34when they made things Instagram official. They've shared several special moments
08:38with their followers on social media, including prom and a trip to Disneyland.
08:42Even though Anderson-Emmons returned to relative normalcy after Modern Family ended,
08:47she hasn't given up her love for acting. In fact, she's been in several school plays,
08:51and her parents are often in attendance to support her.
08:54And we don't just mean her actual parents. In November 2023,
08:57Jesse Tyler Ferguson posted a photo on Instagram of himself and his former TV daughter
09:02on the occasion of attending her high school play. As he wrote in the caption,
09:06"...got to see my talented pretend daughter,
09:08Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, in her high school production of The Burn.
09:12It's crazy to think Aubrey was just a few months older than Beckett when I met her.
09:15Look at her now! Congrats, Aubrey. You were so great. Love you. You make a pretend papa proud."
09:21And this wasn't the only time that Ferguson supported his former co-star,
09:24as he also attended another one of her school productions in March 2024,
09:28The Theory of Relativity. This time, he brought another former Modern Family star along with him,
09:33Julie Bowen, who played Mitch's sister, Claire. During an episode of Ferguson's podcast in June
09:382024, he revealed how Anderson-Emmons' mom will let him know whenever she's doing a school play
09:43so that he can attend.
09:45"'Cause I was like, oh my God, ain't no way Jesse's gonna be here, and he's literally
09:48won a Tony. Like, that's so scary. Like, you're so accomplished when it comes to theaters."
09:55If you can believe it, Anderson-Emmons is almost finished with high school,
09:58and in May 2024, she showed off a sweet milestone on TikTok to immortalize the moment.
10:03In the video, she initially appears dressed down, while lip-syncing to a scene from the 2003 movie
10:08The Cat in the Hat. Then it cuts to her all dolled up for prom in a chic black gown,
10:12white corsage, and earrings as she stands next to her boyfriend, Phoenix Reed.
10:17Anderson-Emmons also shared the video on Instagram,
10:19along with several other sweet photos from the special night.
10:22The comment section was flooded with compliments about how beautiful she looked,
10:26as well as GIFs for Modern Family. One person even declared,
10:29"'Cam and Mitchell would be so proud.'"