In an interview with her hometown newspaper the Winnipeg Free Press, Nia Vardalos talked about the sequel to her ht film My Big Fat Greek Wedding. And although she didn’t reveal too much, aha shares some heart-felt explanations about why it’s taken her so long.
Vardalos, 51, told the Canadian newspaper that her producers and mentors, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, wanted a sequel immediately after the original film became a smash hit— over a decade ago, netting $200 million in North America alone and nabbing an Oscar nomination for her script.
But at the end of the first film, her character Toula becomes a mother, and Vardalos herself was struggling to become one herself.
“I was in such a struggle to become a mom that I just couldn’t do it. I just could not do the sequel for the simple reason it would be difficult to write an experience that I was not having. And the American press was so invasive,” she said in the interview.
“I thought, ‘I can’t do it,’ and I hid, and did all these other fun movies that I wanted to explore. Now that I am a mom, there is just such a story that I want to tell. And although just like the first one there are things that have been made up, the script for number two is from my real experience.”
Vardalos wrote about her experience adopting a foster child from the United States in her recent memoir “Instant Mom.”
“I welcome the lines around my eyes because I know that it’s because I am ridiculously happy. She is a very special person. I know everyone thinks their child is amazing, but mine is,” she said with a laugh.
Although Vardalos says she’s sworn to secrecy about the plot — “The producers in Los Angeles told me if I talk about ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ they will Taser me from there!” — she promised that the sequel will include a wedding. The whole “big fat family” has been invited back, with some special surprise guests thrown in, she added in the interview.
She gave no other details about the sequel and no word if John Stamos will appear this time. After news of the sequel hit the airwaves, he tweeted a plea to producer Rita Wilson, saying that his “Greek ass” better be in the sequel.
The script for the “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” sequel has been in the works for four years now, but Vardalos said she felt stuck — until her parents recently stopped by for a visit. “My parents came to live with us for a month during the winter months, and just watching their dynamic, one night I went, ‘I got it! I got it!’ and just went to my office and finished it,” she said.
She turned in the script to Playtone — the production company created by Hanks and producer Gary Goetzman — on John Corbett’s birthday. Corbett, who played her fiancé in the original film, was immediately back on board, said Vardalos.
“I texted John Corbett and said, ‘Do you feel like kissing me again?’ He was like, ‘I’m in, baby,'” she laughed.
