Whatever Happened To The Actress Who Plays Lily On Modern Family?

In the first episode of "Modern Family," Cam Tucker (Eric Stonestreet) and Mitch Pritchett (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) adopt a daughter named Lily. She's just a year old at that time, and, in typical Hollywood fashion, portrayed by baby siblings named Ella and Jaden Hiller. Then, starting in Season 3, an actor named Aubrey Anderson-Emmons took over the role.

Anderson-Emmons was four years old when she joined "Modern Family" as Lily, meaning she was about the same age as her character at the time of her debut. From that point on, Anderson-Emmons remained a core member of the "Modern Family" cast. By the time the series finale aired in April 2020, she had aged from a toddler to a teenager in front of the sitcom's audience. Here's what she's been up to since.

Aubrey Anderson-Emmons didn't do much acting outside of "Modern Family" during her time on the show. She appeared in a couple of short films, but that was it. However, that's not to say that she wasn't popping up on TV. She made promotional appearances as herself and occasionally worked on reality TV throughout her time on the sitcom: In fact, she earned her second-ever credit in 2012, just one year after joining "Modern Family," with a cameo in the "Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade" special that aired on ABC.

Anderson-Emmons' first talk show appearance came one year later when she guested on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Then, in 2016, she worked as a celebrity judge on an episode of "Beat Bobby Flay." Her busiest year was 2018, during which she was a contestant on the Nickelodeon reality series "Paradise Run" as well as a guest on both "Home and Family" and "The Real." Her most recent TV appearance was technically after the last "Modern Family" episode: She was in the "A Modern Farewell" special that aired in its immediate wake.

Fans of Anderson-Emmons who are interested in seeing her in a different context will have a blast looking back at these old appearances, but what about her acting work post-Lily? She's added just a single acting credit to her resume since leaving "Modern Family" behind: 2024's "Tailwinds," the third short film of her career. She and her mother, comedian and actor Amy Anderson, star as a girl and a pilot who strike up a relationship over a shared interest in aviation.

By the time she was 11 years old, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons had already begun dedicating some of her time to an impressive variety of charities. At that point, she had worked with St. Jude's Hospital, the California Covenant House Youth Shelter, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Help A Mother Out, Walk For Women, and the Dave Thomas Foundation For Adoption, among others.

Her commitments to these charities were cited in "The Book of Awesome Girls" by Becca Anderson, who profiles girls and women who have contributed significantly to history or pop culture. Anderson-Emmons is among some of the younger individuals profiled. While her sometimes divisive work as Lily on "Modern Family" is the primary reason she made the cut, her charity work made her inclusion a must.

The best way for fans of Aubrey Anderson-Emmons to keep up with her present-day activities is through her social media channels. Like a typical Zoomer, Anderson-Emmons is most active on Instagram and TikTok. On both platforms she boasts followings of more than a million users, making her a bonafide social media star.

Anderson-Emmons' social media activity earned her some viral attention after "Modern Family" concluded. An otherwise standard TikTok dance video she posted in 2021, for instance, amassed nearly two million likes and countless comments from users surprised to see the former "Modern Family" baby grown up. A comment that simply reads "GIRL ITS LILY WHAT" received more than 68,000 likes alone.

Fans of "Modern Family" had a similar reaction to a photo that Jesse Tyler Ferguson posted alongside Anderson-Emmons on X. Among the countless users sharing how shocked they were by her growth was former "Modern Family" co-star Sarah Hyland, who played Haley Dunphy. That said, Anderson-Emmons is an active poster and maintains a genuine following beyond nostalgia for her work as Lily.

Since Aubrey Anderson-Emmons started acting when she was just four, her mother, Amy Anderson, has been a key contributor to her career from the very start. Amy (who appeared in shows like "Raising Hope" and "Silicon Valley" during her daughter's "Modern Family" tenure) and Aubrey starred in the aforementioned 2024 short film "Tailwinds," but that was far from the first time that they appeared on camera together: The mother and daughter review food on social media under the name FoodMania Review.

The project dates all the way back to June 2015, when Audrey was just 8. In their most recent post, which they shared in March 2025, they tried Mr. Beast's Feastables Creamy Peanut Butter Eggs. They don't post as regularly as they used to, but the YouTube Channel remains active, with over 40,000 subscribers. FoodMania Review also has an Instagram page. The collaborative relationship that Amy Anderson established with her daughter when she was starting out in the industry still persists in the form of this shared social media project.

The final season of "Modern Family" wrapped production in February 2020; at the time, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons was 12 years old. During her years on the show, she had been homeschooled to accommodate network TV's year-round shooting schedule. After "Modern Family" ended, however, Anderson-Emmons decided that she wanted to have the experience of going to school with other kids her age — so she took a break from acting for several years.

Speaking to E! News, the actress revealed that, despite her resolve to just focus on being a teenager, her post-child stardom years didn't exactly mark a return to normalcy — after all, the global COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States almost immediately after she finished filming "Modern Family." "We wrapped the show, and two weeks later COVID hit," Anderson-Emmons said. "So I went from a major TV show to lockdown."

To make matters more complicated, being a regular cast member on one of TV's most popular series led to some social ubiquity in her new milieu. "People recognized me, and it was a lot," Anderson-Emmons revealed. "I ended up switching schools and found a place that fit me better." All the while, she remained steadfast in her decision to step away from screen acting for at least some time — until her very experiences as a regular high school student brought her back into the game.

After opting for a teenage life away from the spotlight, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons found her way back to acting through her high school's theater program. In an April 2024 TikTok video, she said that she didn't plan on returning to the screen after "Modern Family," telling her followers, "I thought that I would never act again in my life." However, as she went on to explain, after going back to public school for her high school years, she found herself drawn to theater class and realized that acting was something she still loved. Before long she was "auditioning again" and pondering a possible future as a grown-up actress, something she now says she's very much open to.

Although Anderson-Emmons didn't have any acting projects on the docket when she made that TikTok, she remained active throughout high school by taking part in school plays — which were even attended by her "Modern Family" co-stars. In November 2023, Jesse Tyler Ferguson turned up at Anderson-Emmons' school to watch her in a production of "The Burn" and posted about it on his Instagram, beaming with pride at how far his TV daughter had come. In March 2024, Ferguson returned, this time accompanied by "Modern Family" co-star Julie Bowen, to watch Anderson-Emmons' school production of the musical "The Theory of Relativity." In both cases, Ferguson's reviews of Anderson-Emmons' performance were glowing.

During the show's farewell cycle, series co-creators Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd floated the possibility of a "Modern Family" spin-off focused on Cam, Mitch, and Lily's life following their move to Missouri in the finale, stating that there were no concrete plans but that it was an idea the show's writers were toying with. Two years later, Jesse Tyler Ferguson revealed that the script for a spin-off had been written, but had not been picked up by ABC. Finally, in 2024, Eric Stonestreet confirmed that ABC had decisively shut down the Christopher Lloyd-backed spin-off, telling Variety that the network's decision "felt a little hurtful." He added: "It would have been a slam dunk. I don't think it would have not been successful."

While being interviewed by Trisha Paytas on her podcast Just Trish in November 2024, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons stated that she and her mother Amy Anderson had been aware of the potential spin-off, even though it never took off. She was also under the impression that it had been rejected by the network. "And everybody asks for [a spin-off] now, so I'm like 'Why wouldn't [ABC] want that?,'" she wondered. "And honestly, I think they should pitch it again." Anderson-Emmons expressed uncertainty about whether Jesse Tyler Ferguson would be interested in a spin-off at this point, but she's fully on board with the idea. "I mean, I would do it," she told Paytas. Some "Modern Family" fans still think the show failed Lilly with a lack of screen time, and this could be the remedy.

In one of the many instances in which she got candid with fans on social media, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons posted a TikTok video in May 2025 in which she opened up about what it was like to literally grow up on television. She confessed that, as grateful as she was for her time on the show, it was a decision foisted upon her. "No one was like, 'You're gonna do this,' and whatever. It was not like that," she said. "But it's true; you don't know what you're getting yourself into as a 4-year-old when you sign a contract to be on a show for a series regular."

It's a statement that dovetails with her earlier 2024 Tik-Tok video about the same topic, in which she detailed the toughness of balancing set hours and studio school, explaining that her daily three hours of classes left her virtually no free time — to say nothing of the social insulation of going to school with no one but the set teacher, which was the case during the latter seasons of "Modern Family" when the other child actors had grown up. Additionally, in her 2025 TikTok post, Anderson explained that being constantly judged for her acting took a toll on her as a child. "I think it was just really hard for me to grow up with so many people's opinions around me," she admitted.

Aubrey Anderson-Emmons' full name is Aubrey Frances Anderson-Emmons, and, in 2025, she made the momentous decision to shuffle around the names by which she'd like to be known professionally. Speaking with E! News in August of that year, she revealed that she'd now be going by Frances Anderson for the purposes of her work as a musician. She made that change for two reasons. The first was that Frances Anderson is a shorter name and rolls off the tongue more easily than Aubrey Anderson-Emmons. "I do have a long, hyphenated last name," she confessed to E! between chuckles.

As for the decision to specifically take up Frances, given to her after an old family friend of her mother, she explained that it was a deliberate means of separating her identity as a "Modern Family" star and her newly-commenced journey as a singer-songwriter. "I wanted to switch it up and I wanted people to see a new side of me. And I wanted to create a space specifically just for music," she detailed. It's a choice that makes perfect sense when taking into account that Anderson, who began acting at 4, never really got to pick a stage name. We'll be referring to her as Frances Anderson for the remainder of this article.

The first step Frances Anderson is taking in the new era of her artistic career is officially launching herself as a solo musician. She was exposed to music at a young age via piano lessons and would later discover a passion for songwriting through her high school music class. She learned how to play guitar during COVID-19 and performed with a band named October as she honed her skills, but now she's pushing her talents further with a solo EP titled "Drown." Featuring five songs, with four being originals and one a memorable cover of "Maps" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the EP showcases her triple-threat talent as singer, guitarist, and songwriter. All four original tracks on "Drown" are written by Anderson herself and feature her vocals, with production being handled by Elliott Woodbridge.

An indie pop record with folk, bedroom pop, and shoegaze inflections, "Drown" charts a coming-of-age story inspired by Anderson's own childhood, as well as the emotional turmoil of adolescence — including the end of a three-year relationship. The songs are all pristine, dreamy pop compositions spotlighting Anderson's singular alto voice. "Just because I swim, it don't mean I can't drown," she croons on the title track, which spearheads the EP's mission to render teenage throes in plainspoken yet poetic terms. As Anderson told People, she was determined throughout the making of "Drown" to make the music authentic: "I wanted to be truthful for who I am and not who I played on TV," she said.

As part of the promotional cycle for "Drown," in addition to sitting down with E! and People for exclusive interviews on the details of her creative process and the journey that led to her self-rediscovery as a singer, Frances Anderson also took to Fox 11 Los Angeles for a live performance of "Don't Forget Me," the EP's fourth track. Appearing on the local morning show Good Day LA in August 2025, Anderson revealed to anchors Sandra Endo and Bob DeCastro that her mother and grandmother are also singers, so it's something that runs in the family.

Asked about artists she's inspired by, Anderson singled out Hozier, Fleetwood Mac, and The Beatles as some of her biggest musical influences, and cited Grentperez, Beabadoobee, and Laufey as artists she dreams of dueting with. She then took to the stage for a beautiful performance of "Don't Forget Me," a song about walking away from a relationship and accepting the reality of a life apart. You'd never guess from her ethereal, impeccable live vocals that Anderson is a newcomer to professional music; if this performance is anything to go by, we're going to be seeing Frances Anderson singing on TV a lot more often from here on out.

During Pride Month in 2025, Frances Anderson publicly came out as bisexual. Ever the social media savant, Anderson posted an Instagram reel that worked so thoroughly as a comedic callback to her time on "Modern Family" that you could almost miss that it was also a major personal milestone. Namely, she recorded a lip-sync to the famous scene in which Lily insists to Mitch, Cam, and Gloria that, because her parents are gay, she's gay, too, prompting the iconic exchange: "You are Vietnamese!" / "No, I'm not, I'm gay!" As for the coming-out part, it happened by way of the text over the video. Anderson wrote: "People keep joking so much abt me being gay when I literally am (I'm bi)."

Funnily enough, Anderson later clarified that she didn't even actively intend to come out to the world. In an interview with Them, she argued that "It shouldn't have to be a moment of bravery to come out because it should just be normalized." As such, upon posting the video, she didn't realize it was a momentous statement. "I just didn't even think of it that way, because everybody in my personal life already knows," the artist revealed. "So it was just one of those things that I forgot to mention to the public." It was only when people started showering her with support that she realized she'd just had her official coming out moment as a public figure.

One of the transformations that Frances Anderson went through in high school was consolidating herself as a certified musical theater enthusiast. She made a point of citing on her Good Day LA appearance that she loves musical theater and is singing "showtunes constantly," and then, of course, there's her own experience performing musical theater in high school. So it's perhaps unsurprising that, as she looks to the future, this is the field where she pictures herself pursuing a higher education.

"Last summer I did a college prep program, and if I was to go, I'd probably go for musical theater and for a BFA. I'd probably either want to be in L.A. or New York," Anderson, who has dreams of being on Broadway someday, revealed to People in August 2025. "I didn't audition for schools this year, so I'll probably take some sort of gap next year. But I would love to maybe go to college eventually." In the meantime, she's honoring the spirit of "Drown" and focusing on being true to herself and to her current interests, which also include yoga, hiking, and horseback riding.