She Played Sue Heck on “The Middle.” See Eden Sher Now at 30.
Everyone in the Heck family on The Middle had their quirks, but no one was quirkier than Sue, the often overlooked middle sister, played by Eden Sher. But though her family didn’t always appreciate her, throughout the series Sue had many boyfriends, and a small group of equally offbeat friends. Sher starred as Sue throughout the entire sitcom, from 2009 to 2018. While she was just 18 and had a few roles to her name when the show premiered, now, Sher is a 30-year-old woman with two children of her own. Read on to find out what the former sitcom kid is up to today.
Sher almost got her own spinoff.
In 2018, as the family sitcom was coming to an end, ABC ordered a pilot for a spinoff of The Middle. It was to focus on Heck’s character and be called Sue Sue in the City, a play on Sue’s legal name. Sue Sue in the City would have followed the middle Heck as she worked at a hotel in Chicago and was also supposed to co-star Brock Ciarlelli, who played her boyfriend Brad on The Middle.
Unfortunately, the pilot didn’t lead to a full series order. Ciarlelli explained to disappointed fans in an Instagram Live, as reported by CinemaBlend, “The unfortunate thing is it was such a good pilot but the timing of it just wasn’t on our side. And that’s just what happens. I think it this industry a lot of times, no matter how good something is timing and luck both have to be on your side, and unfortunately, the timing just wasn’t on our side for it to all pan out.”
She’s continued acting.
Sher had been acting since she was 10 years old, when she appeared in a short film. Her first recurring TV roles were in 2006, when she played Gretchen on Weeds and Carrie on Sons & Daughters. She appeared in episodes of The O.C., The Middleman, Party Down, and Sonny With a Chance, then got her big break playing Sue on The Middle, with TV parents Neil Flynn and Patricia Heaton.
While The Middle was airing, Sher took on a few other jobs, including the movies Veronica Mars and Step Sisters and, as well as TV roles in Pair of Kings, Robot Chicken, and Superstore. After the sitcom, she appeared in three episodes of Jane the Virgin and continued voicing the lead character in the animated series Star vs. the Forces of Evil until it ended in 2019. She’s also reportedly in the upcoming film, The Heart, starring Sam Rockwell, Octavia Spencer, and Allison Janney.
She’s a published author.
Sher collaborated with illustrator Julia Wertz on the book The Emotionary: A Dictionary of Words That Don’t Exist for Feelings That Do, which was released in 2016.
“All her life, Eden Sher has suffered from dyscommunicatia (n. the inability to articulate a feeling through words.),” the synopsis of the book reads. “Then, one day, she decided that, whenever she had an emotion for which she had no word, she would make one up. The result of this is The Emotionary, which lives at the intersection of incredibly funny and very useful.”
For her, the transition into being an author was a fairly easy one. “Writing and acting are similar, in that they both started, for me, in having too many crazy brain farts,” Sher told The Knockturnal. “When I found acting, I was like ‘Oh, here’s this thing where I’m allowed to be this way!’ But it almost wasn’t enough. That’s what writing is–writing is for people where acting isn’t enough. I’d come home and think ‘there’s still so much in here!'”
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