With its 14 Emmy nominations, awards from the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild, and viewership that made it the highest-rated new sitcom of the season, ABC’s “Modern Family” is one of the biggest critical and commercial successes of the year. At the Emmys, it’ll be going up against “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Glee,” “Nurse Jackie,” “The Office” and “30 Rock”; while the last of those shows has won the last three years in a row, a recent L.A. Times poll of Emmy experts picked “Modern Family” to break the streak.
Created by Christopher Lloyd (“Frasier”) and Steven Levitan (“Just Shoot Me”), the show is a faux-documentary-style look at an offbeat extended family. The week after the Emmy nominations and a month before the show begins shooting its second season, Lloyd spoke to TheWrap about reviving the sitcom, avoiding Fox and not learning from his mistakes.
Given the show’s success, and the fact that cast member Sofia Vergara was co-hosting the Emmy nominations announcement, you must have had some expectations.
Well, you allow yourself modest expectations. But with expectations come disappointment, so you try to temper them. And I will say that what wound up happening exceeded our expectations, even the ones that we kept to ourselves. To have almost our entire cast nominated, and to be represented in all the major categories that we were submitted in, was pretty gratifying.
Your six principal cast members all entered themselves in the supporting categories rather than splitting their entries between supporting and lead ...
I was really impressed because of the statement it made: that we are all part of an ensemble cast, it’s a great team effort here and nobody stands above it. And in the case of Ed O'Neill, who probably had a better chance of getting nominated in the lead category, the fact that he was willing to sacrifice that says a lot about the guy.
You could certainly argue that his statement backfired. He was the only major cast member who wasn’t nominated, and that may well be because voters felt he belonged in the lead category.
Look, I don’t think this is exactly the way he would have liked to see it play out. But again, the fact that he said, “I know this might harm my chances, but I like the idea of us all going out as equals,” it really says a lot about the guy’s integrity. 
You can hardly be disappointed when five out of your six adult cast members are nominated, but at the same time you never want to see anyone excluded. And if you talk to the actors, they all say that they completely take their cues from Ed, that he’s the anchor of the show. So it feels especially weird to have him be the one who’s left off the list. That’s bittersweet.
When you and Steven Levitan first pitched the show, you had interest from three networks ...
That’s right.
