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Julie Bowen’s ‘Modern Family’ Costars and Her Sons Are Distracting Her From Her Divorce

After nine seasons working together, the Modern Family cast might as well be blood-related. “We’ve seen marriages, we’ve seen breakups,” Jesse Tyler Ferguson told Us Weekly at the sitcom’s For Your Consideration event in L.A. on Monday, April 16. “We are really a family within ourselves so obviously we’re going to be there for each other when we have these hard times. It’s just a part of life and I’m glad we have one another because we’re such a tight group.”

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Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Julie Bowen attend Harper?s BAZAAR celebration of the 150 Most Fashionable Women presented by TUMI in partnership with American Express, La Perla and Hearts On Fire at Sunset Tower Hotel on January 27, 2017 in West Hollywood, California. Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Harper's Bazaar

Related: ‘Modern Family’ Cast Through the Years: How They’ve Changed

Right now the ABC stars seem to be focusing their attention on Julie Bowen, who filed for divorce from her husband of 13 years, Scott Phillips, in February. The former couple share kids Oliver, 11, and 8-year-old twins John and Gustav. And Bowen says her sons are a welcome distraction. 

“The beauty of having three children is they don’t give you much time for thinking,” the Emmy winner, 48, explained to Us on Monday. “They’re like a crash course in being in the now.”

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Julie Bowen on Happy Gilmore

Bowen’s main concern right now is making sure they don’t get a copy of her 1996 comedy Happy Gilmore (She played Adam Sandler’s love interest!) “The other day one of them was like, ‘Can we watch Happy Gilmore?’” she recalled. She immediately told him “no” — and her reason is hilarious. 

“It’s my hair that I’m most afraid of them seeing, not me in lingerie making out with strangers,” she laughed. “It’s the hair. I don’t want them to be traumatized by my hair.” (Bowen once described the style as resembling Princess Diana’s.)

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Though Oliver, John and Gustav are keeping their mom busy — Ferguson says he and the rest of the Modern Family cast are blowing up Bowen’s phone. But that’s nothing unusual. “We have a lot of group texts that go on and on and then they turn into funny videos and funny photos of our family,” he told Us Monday. “It is a way of just connecting with one another. There’s no one in this cast that I wouldn’t feel 100 percent comfortable reaching out to and asking for help or comfort.”

Modern Family airs on ABC Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET.

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