Julie Bowen is best known for her comedy work, but she didn't always think she was funny enough for the genre.

The Modern Family actress, who starred on the hit ABC sitcom for 11 seasons, revealed in a new interview that she initially didn't understand why her agents wanted her to audition for comedy projects. "They sent me out on comedy auditions," she recalled to Andy Richter on The Three Questions. "I was like, 'I can't tell a joke, I'm not funny — don't give me those three-jokes-a-page kind of things."

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Bowen didn't think those auditions would ever pan out, but her team felt differently. "I couldn't do them," she said. "And my managers were always very supportive, like, 'You know what? Helen Hunt isn't funny.' I go, 'What?' They're like, 'Not technically.'"

The actress was baffled by the comparison: "I said, 'She just won like five Emmys.' They're like, 'Yes. So she's funny in a different way. She's not three-jokes-a-page funny. And yet she is wildly funny. Try to be Helen Hunt.'"

After Richter noted that Bowen must have eventually gained her comedic footing to succeed on a wildly popular sitcom like Modern Family, she responded, "You'll notice I didn't do too many jokes. I fell down a lot."

Bowen thought she fared better on comedy-drama hybrids like Ed, on which she starred from 2000 to 2004. "Ed was during when dramedy was a thing," she said. "There was like Ally McBeal at the time. These were hourlongs with like, where there'd be big fighting scenes and then there'd be nice warm, funny scenes. And all things could exist at once. That was a long time ago."

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Bowen also said she didn't feel confident about her Modern Family chances because she auditioned for the show looking a little different than usual. "I didn't think I got Modern Family because I was so pregnant," she recalled. "I was testing for two pilots and I wanted Modern Family, but the other show, the character was pregnant. And I was like, 'I've got a shot at that one.'"

She initially prioritized the other sitcom pilot because she needed job security. "I'm never going to get Modern Family. You guys keep calling me in and staring at my big giant stomach," she remembered thinking. "So I said, 'I need the job.' Like you need the job that's going to pay the bills, that's got legs."

Listen to the full conversation between Bowen and Richter above.