‘Modern Family’s Ty Burrell Teases Phil Dunphy’s ‘Psycho’ Halloween
Preview
Modern Family‘s goofball real estate professional Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell) goes all in on Halloween costumes. So how will he follow up past triumphs like ghoulish groom, bug-eyed fly and rainbow-tux-wearing guy from a place called AwesomeLand? With a nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
In the 1960 horror masterpiece, Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates would dress as his dead mother before going homicidal.
On October 30, sunny dad Phil puts on a gray wig and dusty dress to strike fear in one particular target. “The Dunphy storyline is essentially about Claire being impossible to scare,” Burrell says of his TV wife (Julie Bowen).
The problem, he adds, is that “Phil is scared of basically everything!” For himself, the two-time Emmy winner jokes that upon looking in the mirror at “Mrs. Bates,” his reaction was not terror but “I really thought my grandmothers were more attractive than this.”
With Modern Family’s final fright night comes the realization that the long-running comedy is one step closer to its exit this spring. But Burrell isn’t thinking that far ahead.
(Credit: ABC/Tony Rivetti)
“It’s easy to still make denial useful as the end feels fairly far away,” he admits. And although he anticipates a “much more bittersweet tone” on set after the holidays, he says for now, “we’re having our typical blast making the show and trying to appreciate what we have.”
Modern Family, Wednesdays, 9/8c, ABC
