‘Modern Family’ star Nolan Gould grew up before America’s eyes

Nolan Gould was 10 years old when he was introduced to America as sweet-but-clueless kid brother Luke Dunphy on ABC’s “Modern Family.” As the popular sitcom nears its April 8 finale after 11 seasons, Gould, now 21, says that reading the script for that final episode caught him emotionally off-guard. “I really had no idea …

Nolan Gould was 10 years old when he was introduced to America as sweet-but-clueless kid brother Luke Dunphy on ABC’s “Modern Family.”

As the popular sitcom nears its April 8 finale after 11 seasons, Gould, now 21, says that reading the script for that final episode caught him emotionally off-guard.

“I really had no idea what to expect, and I was trying very much to pull the 21-year-old machismo thing,” Gould tells The Post. “I wasn’t going to cry, and then we had the final table read, and at the end [of the script] when it said ‘End of Series’ I just started balling. My TV sisters [Sarah Hyland and Ariel Winter] pulled out their cellphones and tried to record me crying.

“But the final day [shooting] ‘Modern Family’ wasn’t that sad,” he says. “It was really happy — that sounds weird, but that day was one of the most fun days ever on the set. We were all just sitting around between scenes and hanging out and listening to music. Every time I went back to my trailer I’d find a letter someone else had left me, thanking me and saying how awesome the last 11 years have been and asking me to stay in touch.

“It didn’t feel like work.”

“Modern Family” premiered in September 2009 and revolves around three close-knit, related families living their disparate (and often farcical) lives in LA: the Dunphys (Ty Burrell, Julie Bowen, Hyland, Winter and Gould); the Pritchetts/Delgados (Ed O’Neill, Sofia Vergara, Rico Rodriguez, Jeremy Maguire); and Mitchell Pritchett and Cameron “Cam” Tucker (Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet), who adopted baby Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) from Vietnam in Season 1.

Over the course of the show’s 11 seasons, Luke has evolved from a fresh-faced kid to a (somewhat) responsible young man — a fact not lost on Gould.

“That’s something the writers did, specifically with my character,” Gould says. “Luke changed the most over the years. It was a really cool way to transition him from a dumb, sweet kid everyone loved … then he went through puberty and became a little bit of a jerk. He was a kid growing up, trying to figure out who he was as a person. It kind of mirrored my own life. It came around to watching [Luke] decide in which direction he wanted to go and trying to be a better person.

“He got closer to his family again — and that happened in my life, too.”

Gould says that, for the most part, he managed to balance his day job on “Modern Family” with his home life (his older brother, Aidan, is also an actor).

“I think at first it was a little bit of scrambling trying to figure things out,” he says. “When I first started the show I was 10 years old, and I don’t remember much of my time before ‘Modern Family.’ It was so dope being on a TV set. Then I was trying to figure out if I wanted to go to college and take a break from acting. I never went to high school, and that was another debate for me. I took the California GED [high school equivalency certificate] and I graduated when I was 13, but I never set foot in a classroom. [All of the “Modern Family” kids had an on-set tutor.]

“It was hard to balance my life in acting with my personal life, but I found other ways  to make it work,” he says. “Coming home from a long day on the set, I was going to hang out with my friends and they would introduce me to others and I would try to build a life outside of acting. It’s very sad about the show ending, but I have a life outside of work. It sometimes happens to a lot of young actors that they put all their eggs in the basket of TV.”

‘I love acting. I really enjoy it and I’ve been doing it since I was 5. It’s all I know.’

Gould, who has a role in the movie “Camp” (opposite Joey King from “The Act”), says he’s taking his time deciding on what to do next with his life.

“I love acting. I really enjoy it and I’ve been doing it since I was 5. It’s all I know,” he says. “A friend and I wrote an adult animated pilot that’s very much on-brand with other shows like ‘South Park’ and we’re going to start pitching it.

“Here’s the thing with me,” he says. “I go two completely different routes. My brain says, ‘Go big, go be a producer, go get degrees in writing and acting.’ But the other part of me … I could totally live in the back of a van and visit every national park in the US.

“The nice thing about the show is that I’m good for now,” he says. “I don’t need to run into the first project that comes my way.”

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