My Big Fat Greek Wedding Star Finally Discussed The Truth About The Film

My Big Fat Greek Wedding was groundbreaking in many ways. It was a rom-com, but it didn’t use many of the rom-com tropes traditional at the time. The main conflict in the movie was between Toula, the main character played by Vardalos, and her overbearing Greek family, stunned when she she announces her plans to marry a non-Greek.

Yet that simple story turned out to appeal to millions of people the whole world over. Perhaps not everyone knew the exact context of the jokes about Greek culture… but they had similar jokes in their own culture. And the central core of the story was deeply relatable. Everyone could find something for themselves in it.

Not even the people who distributed the movie expected it to become such a massive hit, especially since 2002 was the release year for Spider-Man, a Star Wars movie, and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Yet, amazingly for such an underdog, it ended up being the fifth-highest-grossing film of the year.

But how did a group of unknowns manage to pull off such an incredible feat? When the film’s 20th anniversary rolled around in 2022, Nia Vardalos spoke to website The Ringer about the making of the film and the Hollywood hardships she had experienced trying to get it off the ground.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is completely based on Vardalos’ life — she does play the main character of the movie after all — and she’s always been open about that. She started writing the script after her agent told her that there weren’t any Greek roles around for actresses, and fired her.

Vardalos had been trying to make it as an actress but had only really done occasional tiny parts and voiceover work. So she poured her heart and soul into the script that became My Big Fat Greek Wedding, knowing it was an opportunity to highlight Greek culture in a way that Hollywood had never seen before.

And Vardalos knew exactly what story she wanted to tell. When she married her husband Ian Gomez — yep, the husband in the movie is also named Ian — her family were puzzled that she wasn’t marrying a Greek person. Like Ian in the movie, her husband ended up being baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church.

Once she had the script, Vardalos turned it into a one-woman show. But she had to promote it herself, with her own money. Luckily, she knew exactly what community it would appeal to. She handed out flyers at Greek Orthodox churches and spent $500 taking out an ad in the Los Angeles Times.

Once people started to see the show, there was some interest in buying the movie rights, but unfortunately all the takers wanted to change the ethnicity of the main characters. Vardalos recounted to The Ringer that producers wanted to make the family Hispanic and cast Jennifer Lopez as the lead.

J-Lo wasn’t Vardalos’ only competition. The actress spoke to the website Screenmancer as things got under way and said, “I was spurred on by the fact that a company affiliated with Disney called me in for a meeting and told me they wanted to buy my idea. I was like, yeah, all right! Until they told me I wouldn’t be in it.”

The funnywoman went on, “And I said, I wrote it for me. And they said, right, but we want Marisa Tomei. And I said, she’s cute and all, but she’s Italian. Long story short, I tell them, very politely, forget it.” Her “knees were shaking” upon saying that, but she knew she had made the right decision.

So all Vardalos’ hard work might not ever have paid off if not for one particular person. It so happened that Rita Wilson, the wife of Tom Hanks and a famous actress in her own right, saw the ad in the newspaper. Because she herself has Greek ancestry, she was interested and went to see the show.

Wilson absolutely loved it. In fact, she adored it so much that she got her husband to see it. And as it happened, Tom Hanks had his own production company by then, Playtone, which he co-owned with Gary Goetzman. Both Hanks and Goetzman decided that they wanted to turn My Big Fat Greek Wedding into a movie.

Vardalos told the website Hollywood Jesus in 2002 that Wilson “was gracious and wonderful and said this should be a movie.” The star had a screenplay all ready to go. Furthermore, she had assurances that Playtone wouldn’t change the nationalities but keep the characters Greek, as they were intended.

The comedienne was still worried, though. She recounted to The Ringer that after her first discussion with Playtone, “I never thought, ‘Oh, my God, they’re going to replace me with Julia Roberts’ in that meeting. But for every second outside that meeting, that’s what I thought.” Yet it never happened.

It was clear that Hanks knew what he was doing. Vardalos told Hollywood Jesus, “He wrote me a beautiful letter – how marrying a Greek woman, and marrying into a Greek family had changed his life. I would call my mom every week or so and read her the letter, and she would cry.”

Soon, director Joel Zwick was on board. And he was thrilled to direct Vardalos in her first leading role. He told Hollywood Jesus, “Not only does the camera love Nia, but she is one tremendous actor. Her own buoyant spirit permeates everything she does. That has been a phenomenal surprise, and it makes this movie special.”

Some of the other movie actors contributed to the Hollywood Jesus article, and they talked about how absolutely delighted they were to be in a film celebrating their culture. Gia Carides, who played cousin Nikki, was another Greek woman who’d married a non-Greek man, so she understood the story immediately.

Carides said, “I grew up in suburban Greek Australia, and the movie is set in suburban Greek Chicago. I met Nia very recently and bonded with her almost immediately as a sister. If you come from a cultural background that is closely knit, like Greek families, you’re going to relate to each other.”

The movie also so happened to give another person their acting break as well. Joey Fatone, who at that point was much better known for being part of N’Sync than for acting in motion pictures, played the role of cousin Angelo. From then on, his star just got bigger and bigger.

When the movie came out in April 2002, critics started singing its praises right away. Famous critic Roger Ebert wrote on his website, “The movie is warm-hearted in the way a movie can be when it knows its people inside out,” and Empire magazine called it, “the kind of romantic comedy you wish you saw more often.”

There were some bad reviews too, naturally. Slant magazine called Vardalos’ script “considerably lazy” and said, “the material is ripe with unfulfilled discourse on self-empowerment and the victory of feminism over traditional values.” It did however admit, “Vardalos’ parodies of family values are frequently funny and, for the most part, honest.”

In April 2022 Vardalos released a Twitter thread to celebrate 20 years of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. She wrote, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding is 20 today. When agents/managers said my script wasn’t good, and actors shouldn’t write, I recall wondering why they were angry. They fired me.”

But of course, from there the star simply knuckled down and did the work — writing the script, of course, but also taking to the streets to promote the show and sticking to her guns when people told her to change it. Keeping the integrity of the script intact was an incredibly hard task for her.

Vardalos said in her interview with Screenmancer that she had met one writer, “who pitched me some openings for the movie. And I said, I think I’ve seen that before. And he said yeah, it worked in… and he listed three films. That’s when I realized they were going to strip My Big Fat Greek Wedding of its authenticity. I mean, they would have put in a car chase scene by the time they had finished.”

The comedienne went on, “I said thanks for telling me I have a good idea, but I’m going to try writing this myself. And they said, but you’ve never written a screenplay. I turn to the writer in the room and ask him, for the record, what he’s written. Wouldn’t you know, he’s uh, not exactly written something himself, but uh, assisted on other scripts. Okay, I said, we’re even.”

Vardalos added, “Rita Wilson saw the play and said, ‘This should be a movie,’ I handed her my screenplay, this creator and producer got the film made with me as the lead. We premiered in 106 theaters, expanded to more, ran for over a year.” But that’s actually an understatement.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding was such a massive hit, theaters had to call up distributors and demand more prints. They were out of luck, though, because the prints quickly ran out, and they had to wait. But of course, while that was going on, more and more people were clamoring to see the movie.

Vardalos remembered in her Twitter thread, “People full of love loved it, and again some were snide, hateful. I was nominated for everything, went on to write and act in films that make people happy, employed hundreds of people, wrote and performed a New York Times Critics Pick play, which has been licensed hundreds of times, wrote a bestselling book whose proceeds get children adopted…”

But that wasn’t all. The Greek goddess concluded her thread with the lesson, “Some people who don’t create anything, including jobs to make situations better, will tell you that what you do is wrong. You can’t make anyone embrace change, marginalized voices or new ideas. So love yourself. And write your story.”

And Vardalos isn’t the only one who achieved success after My Big Fat Greek Wedding catapulted her into fame… the whole cast did very well out of it. In 2016 they even reunited for a sequel, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, and audiences got to see how much they’d evolved as actors and changed up their looks.

John Corbett, who played Ian, was perfectly happy to come back for the sequel. It took only one question from his onscreen wife to make him do it. Vardalos told People magazine in 2016, “I called John and said, ‘Hey, do you feel like kissing me again?’ And he said the ultimate dreamy response — ‘Always baby.’ ”

Lainie Kazan, who was Vardalos’ onscreen mom, was over the moon to come back. Vardalos told the magazine, “Every time I would see Lainie Kazan, I wouldn’t even get the fork to my mouth before she would scream, ‘When are we doing the sequel?!’ So she was really happy.” Kazan celebrated her birthday on the first day of filming, and the cast all went to — where else — a Greek restaurant.

Joey Fatone got all the more famous after My Big Fat Greek Wedding. ‘NSYNC actually split up in 2002, so he was able to devote himself more and more to acting, especially on the stage. He was also on Dancing with the Stars in 2007 and now is a bona fide television personality.

Andrea Martin, who played Aunt Voula, was one of the more famous members of the original cast. She’s continued with her acting success ever since then. And in 2016 she told the website Broadway World of the sequel, “Every single person was asked back, so there's something very sweet about that; it's like a reunion.”

And that wasn't all, Voula noted, “It was heartwarming, as you can imagine. I mean Michael Constantine is 89, and the actress who plays the Great-Grandmother is in her 90s, and everybody came back, not one person said no, and that never happens. So it was beautiful.” Sadly though, Constantine passed away in 2021.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 didn’t get reviews quite as good as the original. Alas, it scored a mere 27 percent on RottenTomatoes. It did however make back its budget, as audiences turned out in droves to see it — all the more impressive considering that it was released opposite Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

In fact, it was sufficiently successful that there’s now most likely going to be a third one. In 2021 Nia Vardalos announced that she had finished the script, and the movie would be dedicated to Constantine. A year later, it was announced the movie would be shooting in Corfu.

It’s been an absolutely amazing ride for everyone involved, especially Vardalos. None other than Tom Hanks summed up her journey in the 2002 Hollywood Jesus piece, “She did a smart thing. She said, ‘This is my story, and I want to play it.’ That actually brings a huge amount of integrity to the piece, because it’s Nia’s version of her own life and her own experience. I think that shows through on the screen, and people recognize it.”