<\/p>\n
It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Ed O’Neill<\/a><\/strong> playing the sarcastic<\/a> shoe salesman Al Bundy on Married\u2026with Children<\/em>.<\/p>\n But according to David Faustino<\/a><\/strong>, the actor who portrayed Bud Bundy for the sitcom<\/a>‘s entire run, the role almost went to someone else.<\/p>\n During an appearance on the Pod Meets World<\/em>podcast<\/a>, Faustino, 52, revealed that Fox executives weren’t initially sold on casting the relatively unknown O’Neill, 80, as the patriarch of television’s most dysfunctional family.<\/p>\n “They didn’t want him, like, at all,” Faustino recalled. <\/p>\n He said then-Fox executive Barry Diller<\/strong> opposed casting O’Neill, believing the role should go to a bigger name.<\/p>\n According to Faustino, the disagreement even affected the show’s production schedule.<\/p>\n “They lost six episodes because of it,” he said, explaining that the fight over casting delayed the series before O’Neill was ultimately chosen.<\/p>\n The decision would go on to become one of the defining casting choices in television history.<\/p>\n Premiering in 1987, Married\u2026with Children<\/em> ran for 11 seasons and more than 250 episodes, helping establish the Fox network while turning O’Neill into a household name.<\/p>\n His portrayal of Al Bundy, a perpetually frustrated shoe salesman who longed for his high school football glory days, became one of the most recognizable sitcom characters of the era.<\/p>\n O’Neill later went on to star as Jay Pritchett on ABC’s <\/a>Modern Family<\/em><\/a>, earning three Emmy nominations<\/a> and introducing himself to an entirely new generation of television fans.<\/p>\n RELATED: <\/strong>Before Solo Stardom, Kenny Rogers Made a Career-Changing Decision<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This story was originally published by <\/em>Parade<\/a><\/em> on Jul 17, 2026, where it first appeared in the <\/em>TV<\/a><\/em> section. Add Parade as a <\/em>Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.aol.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Ed O’Neill playing the sarcastic shoe salesman Al Bundy on Married\u2026with Children. But according to David Faustino, the actor who portrayed Bud Bundy for the sitcom‘s entire run, the role almost went to someone else. During an appearance on the Pod Meets Worldpodcast, Faustino, 52, revealed that Fox […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2199148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2505858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Melissa-Gilbert-Celebrates-Dick-Van-Dykes-100th-Birthday-With-Throwback.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2505858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2505859,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505858\/revisions\/2505859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2199148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2505858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2505858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2505858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}