Julie Bowen doesn’t expect her kids to follow in her Hollywood footsteps any time soon. However, she did recently work with them on a special project.
The Modern Family actress partnered with Hyundai for a social media series highlighting teen driver safety. As a mom of three teenage boys, Oliver, John and Gustav, the message of the campaign was very important for Julie, 54.
“I don’t know if Hyundai actually knew that I drive a Hyundai. … I love my car very much. They might have reached out organically knowing that, and that I also have three teen sons who are all at the learning-to-drive age,” she told First for Women in an interview published on Sunday, October 27.
“When they asked to partner with me, they also asked to partner with my sons,” she revealed. “My kids have no interest whatsoever in being actors, but they thought it was cool that they would get to learn about this car. It was really fun to do a project with them because they aren’t going to be actors, but they got to be in my world a little bit in a place where it was about their world. It was a good crossover.”
Julie shares her kids with ex-husband Scott Philips, whom she divorced in 2018.
“I’m really thankful for kids who are safe and defensive drivers,” the Happy Gilmore star shared with the outlet. “I tell my kids all the time, ‘Every person on the road is drunk! They’re all drunk and they’re all on their phones, every last one of them!’ So you have to rely on your skills and your tools.”
A lot of the comments on her social media campaign video pointed out how much Julie is just like her Modern Family character, Claire Dunphy, in real life. One thing that is for certain about her relationships with her kids, is that Julie approaches parenting with a sense of humor like Claire.
“I always thought, ‘I’m on a TV show that’s a comedy and people think I’m funny, so surely my kids will think I’m funny,’ but no,” she confessed. “Sometimes I feel like you need a sense of humor more for yourself. There are times when I feel like I’m looking around the house for the camera, for someone to look at and go, ‘Are you kidding me? Is this really happening?’ like Claire was able to do in Modern Family. In real life, if you just roll your eyes at them, that doesn’t go well.”
Julie went on to explain that she tries to “modulate” her tone so she can “be loud and remind myself to laugh at the things that they think are funny even when I don’t think they are.”
“And you have to have a sense of humor when they’re on a three-day streak of not washing dishes,” the mom of three continued. “I’ve also taken to photographing their socks and underwear in all the places I find them around the house, because that makes me laugh, as opposed to yelling at them.”
