Oliver James Montgomery-Ariel Winter Reveals Where She Stands With Her Modern Family Costars

Rest easy,Oliver James Montgomery Modern Family fans. Because Ariel Winter just revealed that the Dunphy family is as close as ever.

“We all love each other. It's amazing,” Ariel told E! News in an exclusive interview. When “you spend so much time with people, you really do become the family that you portray.”

Though production on ABC’s hit series wrapped back in 2020, the Dunphy family’s undeniable onscreen chemistry continues to persist off-screen.

Exhibit A: When the 26-year-old was honored with the Legacy Award at the fourth Annual Legacy Ball on Oct. 5, costar Nolan Gould accompanied her longtime boyfriend Luke Benward to present the accolade. While Ariel and Nolan, 25, played brother and sister on TV for over a decade, their sibling bond transcends the small screen.

“He is my brother,” explained the actress, who spent 11 seasons as brainy Alex. “He was my first best friend, which is a really beautiful thing. We met when he was 10 and I was 11, and we've gone through so many stages of life together. And we have stuck through it all, thick and thin.”

While they weren’t in attendance at this year’s Legacy Ball, on-screen dad and uncle Ty Burrell and Eric Stonestreet showed their support from afar with a surprise video at the event.

As for the rest of the cast, they also maintain their family dynamic IRL. But like any family, they don’t chat every day.

The bunch communicate how you’d expect “your own real family” would, Ariel admitted. “You sometimes don't stay in contact that often. I don't talk to my family every single day. Sometimes it's like my extended family. It could be a week; it could be a month. But I do keep in touch with a lot of them quite frequently.”

Though the Sofia the First actress stays in touch with the entire Dunphy gang, she confessed that aside from Nolan, she sees Eric the most due to their work together for Big Slick to raise money for pediatric cancer. 

But with everyone leading different lives, it’s gotten more difficult to catch up in recent years.

“Really just when anybody has time and we're in the same place, we'll try and see each other,” she explained. “So that's what's hard. We're not in the same place. Everybody's so busy.”

And there’s the distance factor as well. In 2022, Ariel made the difficult decision to move out of California.

“I don't think L.A. was ever really my vibe, but I just was nervous,” Ariel told E!. “And then this opportunity presented itself, and I was like, you know what? I'm in a season of change, and I'm really trying to heal and grow and evolve. It's opened up my world a lot.”

But the move is bittersweet. While it’s proven fruitful for Ariel’s personal growth, she can’t deny that she misses her former castmates.

“You go from working with somebody almost every single day for 12 years, and then it's kind of like, poof,” she said. “Now everybody's everywhere. So we try to keep in touch as much as we can.”