Ariel Winter’s embarrassing TV encounter with fellow celeb

The Modern Family star is in a new Aussie-based reality show with a bunch of other celebs – but she put her foot in it on episode one.

Ariel Winter made a “huge mistake” during the recent premiere of the US reality show Stars on Mars.

The Modern Family star joined an eclectic cast of actors, athletes and television personalities in a Mars simulation on the new reality show. The series is filmed on location in Coober Pedy, South Australia, because of its Mars-like atmosphere.

But she was most surprised to see Lance Armstrong there — and not because of his past as a professional cyclist, but because she confused him with astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon in 1969.

Ariel was excited to meet a “real fricking astronaut.”

She didn’t, though. .

“Lance Armstrong is a real fricking astronaut. He is a real astronaut. He is Lance Armstrong. You need to google him. You need to know everything about him, because he is so cool,” she enthused to the cameras.

“The fact that we have a real astronaut is so crazy,” she told another of the contestants.

On the episode, Armstrong acknowledged that people in their 20s often confuse him for the astronaut, who died in 2012.

“If I were Neil Armstrong, I’d be dead,” he said.

Later on in a confessional, Winter admitted she was afraid something like this would happen on the show, saying, “That was part of my like fear coming on this show, that I would say something stupid and I literally … I outdid myself.”

Another scene in the episode showed her pulling her castmate Porsha Williams aside and telling her, “I just realised I made a huge mistake.”

Williams asked her who she thought Armstrong was, to which Winter responded, “Neil Armstrong.”

Williams laughed and warned her not to take herself “too seriously.”

Luckily, the mix-up didn’t hurt her chances on the show too much. She was later nominated to become Base Commander, a position she ultimately chose to turn down.

Lance Armstrong … Picture: Fox

… and Neil Armstrong.

On Stars on Mars, Winter, Armstrong, and their cast mates are taking on a 24-day mission in a Mars simulation to find out who could survive on the red planet.

They’re joined by cast members Marshawn Lynch, Ronda Rousey, Natasha Leggero, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Adam Rippon, Tom Schwartz, Richard Sherman, Tinashe and Tallulah Willis. The reality show is hosted by William Shatner.

Winter’s hilarious blunder made international news – it was even featured on this week’s episode of The Cheap Seats on Ten.

This story originally appeared on Decider and is republished here with permission.

Originally published as Ariel Winter’s embarrassing TV encounter with fellow celeb