Christine Baranski Says Getting the Men to Sing and Dance in Mamma Mia 2 Was 'Like Rocket Science'

Universal Studios /Courtesy Everett Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård and Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)

Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård and Pierce Brosnan might want to stick to just acting!

Christine Baranski joked about her Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again costars in Vulture's new oral history of the film's ending, saying of Brosnan, 68, Skarsgård, 70, and Firth, 61, "Just to get them to sing the song and put one foot in front of another and raise a glass of beer together, it was like rocket science."

Writer/director Ol Parker went as far as to quip the trio were downright "arrhythmic," adding, "Stellan, I think we digitized his mouth, because he went, 'Oom-pah-pah,' at the wrong time. How hard is it to do that?"

"It's a disaster, every shot," Parker continued. "But we just get away with it."

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Universal Studios /Courtesy Everett Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)

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According to Parker, 52, "Part of the fun is watching these guys make absolute twats of themselves with complete abandon. Watch it again, and you'll see how much they all suck."

Admitted Skarsgård, "The digitized mouth probably looks better."

Skarsgård said earlier in the conversation that he and Firth "knew we weren't cast because we would sing and dance" in the first movie.

"We were cast just as, like, the bimbos that should be cute and funny. It really was like a community theater project," he explained. "Some things that you've come up with are accepted and some are not, and you feel absolutely safe and free."

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Parker said the decision "to hire people that couldn't sing" in the first movie was "astonishing" to him, and "brilliantly democratic."

"But we always thought, because we were coming back and you want to come back bigger, that we would slightly raise the bar," he told Vulture. "And frankly — singing, it was important to me. They didn't have to be astonishing, but a degree of competence was looked for in the auditions."

But Baranski thought "people understood that it was something very tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing," in the lack of singing talent.

"None of us were seasoned musical-comedy performers. I've done musicals, but I wouldn't characterize my career as mainly musical comedy," she added.