Now 16, Aubrey said that it was her mother's agent who suggested that Aubrey audition for the role of Lily when she was just 4. "I had a chemistry read with Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who plays my dad on the show. He's the ginger one, love him," she recalled.
Thankfully, the nature of Modern Family following multiple families meant that the actors didn't need to go to set every day. "It was easier for me growing up, for sure. I mean, obviously, we still had to wake up super early in the mornings. And it was a little bit stressful for my mom, I bet, but I was probably there two to three days a week," she explained.
Aubrey then said the most common question she gets asked is whether it was "really fun growing up on a set" as she did. "The thing that I think people don't realize was that I was working. If I wasn't working on the set, then I had to do three hours of studio school a day, so I had no time to rest except lunch," she replied. "There are moments that were fun, for sure. And there were things I loved about it. But, you know, it is work."
The actor praised Miss Sharon, her studio teacher, for her work and noted that Ariel Winter, Nolan Gould, and Rico Rodriguez were all in class with her (Sarah Hyland was actually 18 when the show started). "Then they graduated all before me. When I was 10 years old and above, I was doing school with nobody but the set teacher — which is nice because you get more one-on-one time, but then you're also not having social interactions with other kids," Aubrey continued.
"Because I was on set a lot, my mom decided to homeschool me from the first grade," she said, adding that she was back in public school "for a hot second." However, once the show ended, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out — meaning that nobody was in "regular" school.
"Then once high school happened, I immediately went back into public school, and I've been there since," Aubrey explained. "I took a bit of a break right after the show ended, and I thought that I would never act again in my life."
