Julie Bowen‘s Latest Role Is Wildly Different fromModern Family’s Claire Dunphy: ‘I’m Not Just a Suburban Mom’ (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Julie Bowen in ‘Hysteria!’ and ‘Modern Family’.Photo:Mark Hill/Peacock; Tony Rivetti via Getty

Mark Hill/Peacock; Tony Rivetti via Getty

After 11 years starring as Claire Dunphy onModern Family,Julie Bowensays she getsa lotof roles for moms. She’s not mad about it.

“I didn’t really care,” Bowen tells PEOPLE. “I loved that job, and I love working, but I’ve always thought, if Claire Dunphy is the last job I ever had, then I lived a good life.” Still, her latest role in Peacock’s pop-horror seriesHysteria!, about the satanic panic of the ’80s, wasn’t just a typical suburban mom role.

Julie Bowen as Linda Campbell in ‘Hysteria!'.PEACOCK

PEACOCK

Nolan North as Gene, Julie Bowen as Linda, Bruce Campbell as Chief Dandridge in ‘Hysteria!'.Mark Hill/Peacock

Mark Hill/Peacock

She adds, “It was so much fun. It’s still unclear to me at the end of the season. I’m like, am I nuts?”

She says there’s also a timely element to the theme of the story, which follows teens in a small town who lean into satanic panic and start a metal band.

“Matthew Scott King, who wrote it, explained to me that it’s about people being in news bubbles. And we’re all in news bubbles now,” Bowen, 54, says.

“Your algorithm feeds you news, and we’re all just getting in these little echo chambers. And what a great way to sort of show how that works, to go back to a time when there wasn’t digital media, there wasn’t the internet. But you’ve got a small town where everybody is getting the same misinformation and spreading it around in this bubble, showing how dangerous it gets. Mass hysteria comes out of all these people believing the same rumor in the gossip mill.”

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Up next, Bowen is currently filming theHappy Gilmoresequel withAdam Sandler, producing several projects and looking at scripts.

As for great roles for older women, she says there are some.

“Jodie Fostercrossed over. She’s my freaking hero. AndAnnette Bening. But a lot of my peers still look 30! I remember I lost a role to one of those very worked-over people once, and they said, ‘We want someone older than you,’ and I was like, ‘But she looks like she’s 22!'”

Hysteria!is now streaming on Peacock.

source: people.com