In Mr. Peabody & Sherman, the titular brainiac dog is voiced by Phil Dunphy himself, Ty Burrell. When Burrell was asked if he saw any similarities between the two characters during an interview with IndieLondon, the actor replied that Peabody and Phil couldn't be more different: "Peabody is so rational. He really is the embodiment of rationality, whereas Phil Dunphy is the embodiment of irrationality... just no introspect at all in Phil, or very little fore-thought."
But off the screen, the two do have something in common. On Modern Family, Phil's daughter Alex is played by Ariel Winter, who also provides the voice of Sherman's classmate, Penny Peterson, in Mr. Peabody & Sherman. While Penny isn't Peabody's daughter, she does tag along for their big adventure through time. IndieLondon asked Burrell about pulling double duty with Winter, to which the actor replied, "[T]hat was one of those things where that didn't surprise me at all. She does a lot of voice work. What's interesting about this process is that I actually don't work with her in the making of this film. What's hilarious is that we would talk about it at Modern Family — that's where we discussed working on this."
Although Burrell didn't get to record his lines with Winter, he did spend some face-to-face time recording with Max Charles, the child actor who provides the voice of Sherman. Burrell told IndieLondon, "Yeah, we did have a session... [W]e all wanted to have at least one experience where we could kind of get a feel for each other. He's just such a talented young man, young boy."
As it turns out, Charles has his own Modern Family connections, as well.
