Aubrey Anderson-Emmons was left “troubled” by child stardom. The 17-year-old actress was just four years old when she was cast as Lily Tucker-Pritchett on the ABC sitcom Modern Family and insisted that she will always be “forever grateful” to the show but still believes that children need to have a “normal experience” growing up.
Speaking on the Just Trish podcast, she told host Trisha Paytas: “I would say wait ’til they know what they want to do. Modern Family has brought me so many blessings into my life, and I’m forever grateful. But I think kids need to have a normal experience and I don’t know if that’s the way to do it. And I feel like I definitely was more troubled when I became older because of the show.”
Anderson-Emmons also explained that she “didn’t know what [she] wanted” to do once the show came to an end in 2020 as she claimed that the choice to go into acting at such a young age couldn’t possibly have been her own to begin with.m
She said: “I felt I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after the show, and I think figuring out your hobbies and experiences for yourself is important, not having your parents choose for you.
“How do you choose what you want to do for eight years when you’re four years old?”
During the joint interview, Anderson-Emmons’ mother Amy Anderson – who has also had a career as an actress and a musician – insisted that the “majority” of former child actors actually end up doing well in life but it is only the “troubled” ones that are ever heard about.
She said: “My belief is the majority of kids in this industry turned out just fine or even really great. A lot of adult actors were child actors and are really thriving in their careers, and a lot of people who were child actors go on to do completely different things … But that’s not who we hear about. We want to hear about the ones who are troubled.”