Ed O'Neill says feud with 'Married… With Children' co-star Amanda Bearse was over a TV Guide cover

Ed O’Neill is reflecting on the possible catalyst that resulted in a feud with his "Married… With Children"co-star Amanda Bearse.

O'Neill appeared on the Thursday episode of his "Modern Family" co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson's podcast "Dinner's On Me," where he theorized that his falling out with Bearse was due to a dispute over a TV Guide cover.

For an issue of TV Guide in 1989, O'Neill, Katey Sagal, Christina Applegate and David Faustino were chosen to be on the cover. However, Bearse was not.

“Her and David Garrison were the neighbors, and they were told they could not be on the cover. Because they had a rule: only so many could be on the cover," O’Neill claimed. "Now, they violated that for like two shows, I think it was 'M.A.S.H.' and 'Dallas.' That was an exception, weren't doing it for us."

Bearse and Garrison allegedly asked O'Neill to fight for them to also be on the cover, but he didn't out of fear that it would sour the opportunity. If he were to go back in time, O'Neill said he "would have" tried. "That's my regret."

USA TODAY has reached out to reps for Bearse.

In 2018, Bearse was asked about the current status of her relationship to her former co-star during a Q&A session at a fan convention. "Are we filming this? I follow the Thumper (from 'Bambi') rule. If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all," she responded.

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O'Neill previously said in an interview with the Television Academy in 2013 that his feud with Bearse became apparent when she didn't invite him to her wedding to Carrie Schenken because he thought it was "silly" to have two brides in tuxedos.

"I don’t know whose fault it was. We just sort of grew a bit apart," he said of their friendship. "Maybe I reminded her of someone she didn’t like, an uncle or something."