Rico Rodriguez, 28, turned heads with a dramatically different look at a red carpet event this week.
The former child star stepped out at the season six premiere of Netflix’s Cobra Kai in Los Angeles on Wednesday, February 12, sporting long, curly hair and a thick beard that rendered him nearly unrecognizable from his Modern Family days. He wore a black shirt with matching pants and a jean jacket, his tight curls falling past his ears and over silver-rimmed glasses.
Rodriguez was joined at the Egyptian Theatre Hollywood by his sister Raini Rodriguez, 32, who starred in Disney Channel’s Austin & Ally and played Paul Blart’s daughter in Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The siblings have walked red carpets together for nearly two decades, and Rico has long credited his family with keeping him grounded through early fame.
“They really kept a solid ground underneath me,” Rico said in a 2016 interview. “And they kept me down to earth.”
He continued at the time: “When [I’m] acting, I’m putting on a character, but when I’m home I’m Rico—Rico that still has to take out the trash, do my chores around the house and then do schooling and stuff like that so I really credit my mom and dad.”
His Modern Family co-parents also treated him like family off-set. “We are so thankful to be working together,” Rico said in 2016. “It’s such a fantastic cast and I know I can speak for everyone and say we love working with each other.”
In the viral moment that launched his career, Rodriguez was cast at age 11 as Manny Delgado, the precocious son of Gloria Delgado-Pritchett (SofÃa Vergara) and stepson of Jay Pritchett (Ed O’Neill) on ABC’s Modern Family. The sitcom ran for 11 seasons from 2009 to 2020, with Rodriguez growing up on screen before viewers’ eyes. Manny’s sophisticated personality and adult-sounding dialogue became a signature element of the show, though Rodriguez later admitted he didn’t always understand what he was saying.
Speaking on the Dinner’s On Me podcast in 2025, he recalled that Manny often had “these big paragraphs and words that I had no idea what I was saying.”
“I would look up online or I would ask my studio teacher Sharon, Miss Sharon, I would ask her: ‘Hey, what does this mean? Why are they laughing? Are they laughing because a kid’s saying this or because the line’s funny? What’s the context behind this?'” he shared. “And so she would explain to me, I’d go: ‘Oh, okay, I understand now’.”
As the series concluded in 2020, Rodriguez reflected on the transition ahead. “I’ve been on this show for 11 amazing years and this is my family,” he told Hollywood Life in 2019. “They’re my second family, so I know that once we’ve finished in March, I am going to think we’re going to come back and start up in July. It’s going to be weird when that time of the year comes around again and we know we’re not going to get together to start filming again.”
Since Modern Family ended, Rodriguez has kept busy with voice work including Nickelodeon’s animated comedy Sneaks alongside Chloe Bailey and Anthony Mackie, and has developed projects through a production company with his sister. He was spotted at Comic-Con’s Entertainment Weekly After Party in 2025, where he told On The Red Carpet that he and Raini had “a couple of projects that are in development now.”
The Cobra Kai finale premiere also delivered news from the series itself, as stars Tanner Buchanan and Mary Mouser confirmed their engagement on the red carpet.