EW Reunion: 'Married With Children'

The affection that exists among Married…With Children stars Ed O’Neill, Katey Sagal, Christina Applegate, and David Faustino didn’t end when the Bundy family left the airwaves 13 years ago. Just last year, in fact, the cast reconnected at the behest of Faustino, who produces an original Web series for Crackle. ”I had them all come back for an episode where we are doing a Married…With Children movie but I’ve been recast with Seth Green.” Fortunately, the real gang was all here for our outdoor photo shoot, where the stars had lots to chat about while relaxing on a very familiar-looking couch.

Ed O’Neill (Al Bundy)
The man behind the boorish, beleaguered Bundy patriarch thinks his character would still be married to Peg today. ”There were no options [for characters like Al],” explains the 64-year-old actor, now a star on ABC’s Emmy-winning sitcom Modern Family. ”See, that’s the thing that the show dealt with. It was the fact that basically he was sentenced to death at 18 because he had no way out. But what we tried to show was he kept showing up. He loved his kids in a strange, weird way, and he didn’t cheat on Peg. There wasn’t a lot of opportunity.”

Katey Sagal (Peg Bundy)
Playing the randy, bouffant-sporting housewife earned Sagal four Golden Globe nominations and television stardom, but the 56-year-old actress says it also made her post-Married career more difficult. ”Peg was something that needed to be broken out of,” says Sagal, who went on to secure breakout roles on Lost, Futurama, and FX’s hit motorcycle drama, Sons of Anarchy. ”After doing that one particular role, I’d have to go in and sort of dance around the room, and really let people know I wasn’t that character.”

David Faustino (Bud Bundy)
He’s dabbling in rap while continuing to work in TV, but the 36-year-old is constantly reminded about the slacker he played for 11 seasons on Fox. ”I have tour buses that come by my house in the summer literally 10 to 20 times a day, every day. They sing [the theme song] ‘Love and Marriage.’ It’s crazy, it never ends. I’m glad about that, though. I still get all the benefits. It’s been a good life for me.”

Christina Appelgate (Kelly Bundy)
Though the cast members often dubbed themselves the black sheep of the Fox family, Applegate, 38, chuckles at how tame Married seems now when compared with some of the envelope-pushing madness that goes on in most sitcoms today. ”I remember we had a joke in the pilot where Al tells Steve [David Garrison] that PMS stands for ‘pummel men’s scrotums.’ We weren’t allowed to use it because of its off-color nature. That would be considered nothing today.” Looking back, Applegate thinks her character was more good girl than bimbo: ”One thing that I kept in mind while playing Kelly is that people would call her a slut, but her behavior didn’t live up to that. We didn’t think of her as promiscuous. She was just called those things. We wanted to keep her likable, innocent, and relatable.”