An oral history of the inexplicably star-studded, hallucinogenic ending of 'Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again,' by rachel_handler
“It’s so lovely because we’re all shit.” Photo: Universal Pictures This story originally ran in February. We are republishing it in honor of Vulture’s Sequels Week.
We spoke to Parker, Curtis, producer Judy Craymer, and many of our favorite Mamma Mia 2 scene-stealers about what went into concluding a sequel that probably should never have happened in the first place. The story involves death, birth, directorial breakdowns, digitized mouths, a jaw-dropping amount of partying, and a collective abandon that’s rare to see onscreen.
Parker: There were various versions of the script where she was stranded in the Philippines and unable to make it back for Colin’s gay wedding. But if she’s not going to be in it, then you’ve gotta own that.Craymer: It wasn’t like a soap-opera death. The songs led us to that decision. I mean, it’s a story of an odyssey. It’s got an element of Greek tragedy about it.
Parker: There was your brilliant rock star list: Debbie Harry and Chrissie Hynde were on it, and Stevie Nicks. Then there was a Broadway list, which was Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand and Patti LuPone. But there was really no one that was both of them. When we decided on “Fernando,” Richard was like, “Who should sing it?” I was like, “Well … it should be Cher.” I’d written in the script, “This is Cher.
Parker: Cher turned it down about four times. The first three rejections were gutting. I kept sending the script back, going, “I don’t think you quite realize that you’re doing this.” And she kept saying no without reading it, I think. I was like, “Sorry, I’m not sure you’ve read it, but you are doing this.” And I’d get another polite turndown. I remember telling the young cast — just announcing that it was going to be Cher, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever.
Photo: Universal Pictures Parker: With most musicals, if you take, say, The Sound of Music, the real shit happens during the song — that’s when Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer fall in love. The songs are the actual narrative, and the bits in between are kind of interstitial and hopefully witty and funny. But the nature of a jukebox musical is that it’s generally the opposite.
Stellan Skarsgård, Bill: When they cast me and Colin for the first film, we knew we weren’t cast because we would sing and dance. We were cast just as, like, the bimbos that should be cute and funny. It really was like a community theater project. Some things that you’ve come up with are accepted and some are not, and you feel absolutely safe and free.
Alexa Davies, Young Rosie: We were all a tight unit, the six of us, because we were all just very panicked and in shock at what was happening. Keenan Wynn: The first time I met Christine was when we were shooting in Croatia, which was about two months into the process. We were in full costume, and I think Amanda Seyfried said, “Jessica, Christine’s right there.” I turned around. The sun was beaming on her. She turned around. We embraced. It was magical. Cinematic. She was just so warm, and she was like, “Look at you. Oh, you’re me.”
Davies: Julie Walters is my favorite person on the planet. So I went and sat next to her and just told her how much I loved her. I did my impression of her for ten solid minutes. And it was too much. There’s a picture that someone managed to take in that moment where Amanda is behind me, and she looks like she is so hyped in that moment, and Julie just looks like she’s terrified and wants to run away. The next day, I was really hungover, and Ol actually came to visit.
Davies: The first one was insane. It was in this amazing old ruins of a castle at the very top of this mountain. It was ridiculous. James: You’d just be walking by the restaurants and everyone’s sitting there having dinner and having a glass of wine. Then I would see Amanda paddleboarding across the front of the sea. Like, “Hey, Amanda.”Dylan: It was a really weirdly amazing experience and a slightly double-edged sword for me, because it was one of my first jobs, so I was thinking, “Well, this is how it is in the working world.
James: It starts when Cher gets off the helicopter. “That’s the best kind of party, little girl.” “Grandma, you weren’t invited.” Craymer: It’s all the final songs. They’re scooping up all the relationships and bringing closure to them. Parker: The sequel thing is tricky. It’s an impossible needle to thread, in some ways, because what people actually want is to watch the first film again. So you’re trying to give them the same, but not too much the same. It needs to build on it — but not just “Now we’ve got more money,” do you know what I mean? So with “Dancing Queen,” I guess it was a bit arrogant.
Curtis: Stellan was hilarious. I remember someone asked him in an interview, “What’s the difference between your character in the last film and your character in this film?” And Stellan said, “He’s wearing a different shirt.” So I thought that showed his depth of commitment to the characterization over the ten years.
Parker: That’s not Cher’s leg, when the helicopter lands and a foot comes down. That’s not her. We needed to know what costume she was wearing so that we could shoot somebody’s leg. And of course, the costume took four years. I think we had to go back to Croatia later. Someone had to fly back to the jetty and just shoot the leg.
Parker: “Fernando” is a complete left turn. Previously, there was no Señor Cienfuegos, and we didn’t have a song for Ruby. She just arrived. There was a glorious moment writing with Richard where we just finished, and we had like five songs left on the wall that we couldn’t do anything with. I said, “All right, hang on a second, let’s get ‘Fernando’ in there somewhere. There’s an old guy, he works at a hotel, he’s the manager.
Parker: Cher and Andy had wanted to work together, and he was very easy. I was like “Come and sing with Cher,” and he was like, “Cool, I’ll be on the next plane.” Garcia: I’m not there to compare myself to Cher as a singer or anything. I’m there to play Fernando, and this is how Fernando sings, as an actor. This is not a singing competition. But yes, I sing and I dance and I have my own orchestra.Garcia: I wasn’t nervous. I was Fernando. She already picked me.
Garcia: There was no rehearsal for the kiss. You don’t rehearse those things. It just happened. It happened the first time on-camera, that’s what happened. When you see it in the movie, it was probably the first take, that was it.When Cher speaks Spanish — that took a while. That didn’t stick in the memory. There’s a scene in the second Marigold movie where Judi Dench speaks Hindi, and it’s not something I’m going to do again to an actor over 70 — give them a language. That took a little while.
Curtis: The most difficult part was definitely trying to make Meryl work. It is an odd thing. Was she going to be ghostly? Who was going to be able to see her? How would you make sure that we knew that Amanda could see her and no one else could see her? Then I remember looking at the fountain and thinking, “We could do that trick!” I called the special effects guys and was like, “Is that going to be possible?” And he was like, “Yeah, sure, no trouble.” Then I called the studio and I’m like, “I think I’ve got it. It’s going to be okay.” I remember taking Meryl to the video village and going, “This is what we’re doing,” and Meryl patting me on the shoulder, which, from Meryl, I’ll take that.
Parker: The song has a big high note at the end, and Meryl was always very happy hitting that. I remember the music supervisor going, “We don’t have to go that high,” and she’s going, “Yeah, we do,” which is very Meryl. We had this insane thing for the earlier parts of the scene where you have the most glamorous and exceptional group of extras that you’ll ever see: Colin and Pierce and Christine and Dame Julie Walters just sit there, and all they get to do is stand up and walk past Meryl without even seeing her. Cher and Andy are in the front row just sitting there all day watching.Parker: Cher was sitting in her chair, and all the actors were queuing to have photos taken with her.
Curtis: The rest of the cast had not seen Meryl throughout the making of this whole film, and I’m guessing not very much in the ten years between them. So it was a genuine reunion. It was one of those moments where the thing you were filming was almost real. It was the first time she’d been within an inch of Amanda since ten years ago, before Amanda herself had a child. It had a real situational truth to it, which I think you can feel in the scene.
Parker: Within the absurdity of Meryl the ghost, and the fact that it’s an ABBA song — once you embrace those things, then you just tell the truth. I think if you try to fake joy, it’s ghastly. If you fake tears, then you’re horrible, it’s manipulative. People want to cry. So that was the task: to go there and hopefully feel it and experience it and turn it into a happy exorcism.
Parker: Just in my head, I couldn’t get from “My Love, My Life” into “Super Trouper.” The female voices at the beginning, that’s just too weird. And the original, it’s obviously a classic, but it’s stompy. It doesn’t really pick you up. It just exists. Baranski: We were in Vis, on the island, and we had to go back to England to shoot that ending. And we hadn’t really rehearsed anything. We had maybe two days. People had cars waiting to get them to the airport to go get to their next movies.
Keenan Wynn: The big surprise was like, “You’re going to be dancing with your younger and older self.” Keenan Wynn: Of course, Christine and I were the first ones to come up with a choreographed moment. We were like, “Five, six, seven, eight …” Hugh Skinner, Young Harry: Colin had the genius idea that we should just see each other and be so disturbed that we’ve seen ourselves at a different age — we just look at each other and look a bit sad about it. Almost like it was something existentialist, kind of Beckett, Silent Fear.Colin’s like, “I’m not doing it. I’m not dancing.” Nicely, obviously, because he’s a sweetie. So, I was like, “Okay. Right.
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