‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2’ star Nia Vardalos reveals the inspiration for her new film
By Carly Green
Cue the wedding bells (and broken plates)! Fourteen years after My Big Fat Greek Wedding raked in more than $241 million at the U.S. box office, winning the distinction of being the most successful romantic comedy of all time, the whole crew is back for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, which premieres March 25.
In the new film, the Portokalos family is preparing for another set of nuptials, but this time the tables have turned, as Toula, again played by Nia Vardalos, faces the challenges of being the parent of a teenage girl, caring for her aging parents and keeping her marriage alive.
Vardalos, the writer, star and executive producer of the film, described the source of her inspiration to Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric.
“When I wrote the first movie, I was the person who had never even written, and so I thought if I’m going to do the sequel, I have to have an idea that is absolutely solid,” she told Couric. “It came to me on my daughter’s first day of kindergarten. I realized I couldn’t let go, and I had morphed into my own suffocating Greek parents.”
Rita Wilson, who championed the first film, both produces and appears in the sequel, alongside her onscreen husband, John Stamos. John Corbett, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan and Andrea Martin all reprise their roles, while the film introduces the young actress Elena Kampouris as Vardalos’s teenage daughter Paris.
Writing strong parts for women is something that’s important to Vardalos. “Amy Schumer’s doing it with Trainwreck, Mindy Kaling is doing it with her show. There are so many of us who said, ‘Look, I can’t wait for the phone to ring with a job offer, I’m going to call myself and just keep creating my own roles, but I can’t just do it for me. My whole gender’s out there looking for work,’ so I wrote very strong roles for the women, but also for the men, because I keep saying we can’t just leave one half of society out.”
Will there be a My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3? Vardalos told Couric, “I’m open. I said no for so long, but I’m open now.”