Julie Bowen‘s Latest Role Is Wildly Different from “Modern Family”’s Claire Dunphy: ‘I’m Not Just a Suburban Mom’ (Exclusive)

The actress says she doesn't mind being typecast as a mom, but this twist made her want to star in the pop-horror series 'Hysteria!'

After 11 years starring as Claire Dunphy on Modern Family, Julie Bowen says she gets a lot of roles for moms. She's not mad about it.

"I didn’t really care," Bowen tells PEOPLE. "I loved that job, and I love working, but I've always thought, if Claire Dunphy is the last job I ever had, then I lived a good life." Still, her latest role in Peacock's pop-horror series Hysteria!, about the satanic panic of the '80s, wasn't just a typical suburban mom role.

"I read the pilot, and I'm like, 'I'm okay. I don't need to do another, just mom,'" she says. "But then, by the end of the pilot, you realize something's wrong, really wrong with her. And we don't know whether she's possessed by the devil or she's completely in her head and that she's a crazy person. And I thought, I like that."

She adds, "It was so much fun. It's still unclear to me at the end of the season. I'm like, am I nuts?"

She says there's also a timely element to the theme of the story, which follows teens in a small town who lean into satanic panic and start a metal band.

Related: Julie Bowen Recalls Thinking She Wasn't 'Funny' Ahead of Modern Family Role: 'I Didn't Do Too Many Jokes'

"Matthew Scott King, who wrote it, explained to me that it's about people being in news bubbles. And we're all in news bubbles now," Bowen, 54, says.

"Your algorithm feeds you news, and we're all just getting in these little echo chambers. And what a great way to sort of show how that works, to go back to a time when there wasn't digital media, there wasn't the internet. But you've got a small town where everybody is getting the same misinformation and spreading it around in this bubble, showing how dangerous it gets. Mass hysteria comes out of all these people believing the same rumor in the gossip mill."

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Bowen says she remembers the satanic panic of the '80s fairly clearly. "It was like, if you play this record by Slayer or Megadeth backward, this scary thing will happen," she says. "It wasn't anything I was into. I was too busy in the backyard riding a pretend horse."

Up next, Bowen is currently filming the Happy Gilmore sequel with Adam Sandler, producing several projects and looking at scripts.

Related: Happy Gilmore Came Out 28 Years Ago — and Star Julie Bowen Says Her Kids Finally Watched It 'Just Last Night'

As for great roles for older women, she says there are some.

"Jodie Foster crossed over. She’s my freaking hero. And Annette Bening. But a lot of my peers still look 30! I remember I lost a role to one of those very worked-over people once, and they said, 'We want someone older than you,' and I was like, 'But she looks like she’s 22!'"

Hysteria! is now streaming on Peacock.