Rico Rodriguez, who played the lovable and wise-beyond-his-years Manny Delgado on the hit ABC sitcom Modern Family, has revealed that he didn't always understand his character's lines. In a recent podcast interview with his former costar Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Rodriguez admitted that Manny's complex dialogue sometimes left him confused.

"Since he was such an old soul, he would have these big paragraphs and words that I had no idea what I was saying," Rodriguez said. "I would look up online or I would ask my studio teacher, Miss Sharon, 'Hey. What does this mean? Why are they laughing?' And so she would explain it to me."

Rodriguez, who was just 11 when he started playing Manny, also shared that balancing schoolwork and acting was a challenge. "It was crazy because sometimes you would have these big chunky dialogues, and then you would rehearse it, and then you gotta go and you have a math test," he said. "I'm like, well, I don't know division. Like, what am I gonna do?"

The actor also fondly remembered his on-screen dad Ed O'Neill, who took him under his wing and helped him with a particularly difficult scene. "There was one time I remember vividly, it was early on, where I was having trouble with this one line," Rodriguez shared. "Then Ed goes, 'All right, stop. Cut the cameras.' He told the director, 'Go sit down.' And he worked with me one-on-one until I got it right."

Rodriguez's on-screen mom, Sofia Vergara, has previously said that the role of Manny was inspired by her own son Manolo's "old soul" personality.

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