Julie Bowen dishes on 'Modern Family' costars

Five seasons in, the cast of ABC’s Modern Family knows each other well. Julie Bowen proved as much when Entertainment Weekly editor Jess Cagle asked her to describe each of costars during a chat on EW Radio this week. Listen to their chat below, which explores why Eric Stonestreet (Cam) is such a wonderful contradiction, how Ariel Winter (who plays her on-screen teen daughter) has to hide her “sexy,” and more Family tidbits.

“He plays a great gay character, is so socially liberal, but is kind of an old school cowboy at heart, too…,” Bowen said of Stonestreet. “He looks like he would be the guy who beat you up in high school, but he’s not. He’s the one who would defend you. And that’s where he just constantly surprises me.”

Most fun are her descriptions of her TV children: We learn Nolan Gould (Luke) is “hormonal”: “He’s getting crushes on girls and sharing them with me, and I’m so lucky and I love it because I know my boys will never do that,” says the real-life mother of three.

Bowen describes the blossoming Winter (Alex) in one word: Sexy. “They do a lot to hide it because her character is nerdy and her character would have a hard time embracing the body that that one just has. And so there’s a lot of baggy sweatshirts and shape-destroying clothes going on,” Bowen says, with a laugh. “But when we see her in the morning, we know what we really have. They keep her good and covered up. And she’s a good girl, she’s a good girl. But it is very interesting to go through all that teenage stuff with fake kids before I have to do it with my real kids…. It is good training. Luckily, I don’t have girls, I only have boys.”

Also entertaining is Bowen remembering how six-year-old Aubrey Anderson-Emmons (Lily) asked if the set was a real house — and if the actors were real people — when she first started on the show.