To wit, she doesn’t really think
about crafting a Sarah Hyland
“brand,” not even on social
media, because she can’t help but
be herself. “What you see is what
you get,” she says, but literally,
and what you see “is most likely a
really annoying, loud, opinion-
ated, brash, most-of-the-time-
disgusting human creature.”
Then again, this is L.A., and
this is an L.A. story, and so the
heroine does glam herself up
from time to time, and the hero-
ine does have plans to beef up her
IMDb and solidify her status as
an industry fixture. She’s got her
eye on producing. She wants to
act in dramatic roles, movie
musicals, period pieces. “I want
to wear a corset,” she says. “I
want to not be able to breathe.”
There was a time when Sarah’s
health issues—kidney dysplasia,
endometriosis, and a hernia—
might have held her back from
this booked-solid future. Or at
least made her feel like she had
to cover up what she’s been
through. “I think a lot of people
hide their struggles because they
don’t want to be seen as weak.
They want to seem like every-
thing’s perfect,” she says. But as
you know by now, she’s not inter-
ested in the “highlight reel on the
internet” life. She cares about the
real one, even when it hurts.
Or when it’s weird and com-
pletely unrealistic, like that time
she found her fiancé on The
Bachelorette.
No, Sarah was not a contestant
on the show—she was home with
her dog on the couch in her
sweats like the rest of us. And like
the rest of us, she thought Wells
times with a matter-of-fact tone,
a shrug, and a bite of salad.
She’s also not really prone to
the between-gigs anxiety that
plagues her peers. This is just the
way it is, you know? “The thing as
an actor,” she says, “is it’s like,
Will I have a job tomorrow? With
Modern Family ending, it’s like,
Oh, great. I’m never going to work
again. I’m going to have to sell
everything and live out of a shoe-
box.” Sarah’s chill might come
from the fact that she’s been there
before: She and her family used to
live together in a 300-square-foot
New York City apartment with a
bathtub in the kitchen. Her dad
“had to travel the country to do
any type of regional theater to put
food on the table,” she says.
Today, he’s playing Dumbledore
in Harry Potter and the Cursed
Child on Broadway. The Gringotts
vault is full.
Staying grounded is all relative
when you earned six figures per
episode on your sitcom’s final
season. (For the record: It’s
reported that Sarah got more
than $100,000 per episode.
There were 18 episodes, so yeah.)
Still, she likes to shop at Urban
Outfitters, where she bought the
red snakeskin-print button-up
she’s wearing to dinner. She
says she actually finds Urban’s
prices too expensive some-
times—which, relatable. She’s
also carrying a Dior saddle bag,
which is less relatable, but buy-
ing it was a whole event. She was
in Paris to film an episode of
Modern Family: “I was like, I
can’t go to Paris and not buy
something. I never buy myself
anything expensive.”
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Haney dress. Forevermark earrings.
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Monique Lhuillier gown. René Caovilla
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