It only took three installments over two decades, but the Portokalos family of the My Big Fat Greek Wedding film series is finally headed to the motherland. In the third movie, they head to Greece for a family reunion in the hometown of their beloved, recently passed patriarch. It’s a delightful development for the franchise, but it only came about via mundane logistics. “Something miraculous happened,” says the film’s writer, director, executive producer, and star Nia Vardalos. “Greece got a tax credit, and that is magic. That is music to any financier's ears.”
If the budgetary stuff is unromantic, it cleared the way for Vardalos to film the country with the “magical realism” she’d always dreamt of. “As I said to Barry, I'm trying to cram all the Greece I love into a camera,” she says of working with the movie’s cinematographer Barry Peterson. Filming, which took place last summer, was based in Athens and Corfu, with scenes in Santorini and some coastline shots of Crete, Paros, and Hydra.
Vardalos specifically sought to avoid visual cliches. “I wanted a way of showing Greece that was not what we've seen: the white buildings against the blue sky, [though] we love it, we've done it,” she explains. “I wanted it to feel like your faintest memory of a 1980s perfume commercial, nostalgic and at the same time, fresh and vibrant.” Vardalos, Peterson, and production designer Grant Armstrong frequently reviewed color boards and debated costumes against those palettes. “We had six meetings just for the interior paint of the main house that the family stays in,” she laughs. “It was just a constant discussion of colors and skin tones, pastels and dreaminess.”
Ahead, Vardalos spills more about the making of the film, its locations, and some tricky camera angles and achievements to watch out for.
SAG-AFTRA members are currently on strike; as part of the strike, union actors are not promoting their film and TV projects. This interview was conducted prior to the strike.
(Left to right) Anthi Andreopoulou, as Alexandra, and John Corbett, who stars as Ian, in Nia Vardalos' My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
The movie takes place betweenChicagoand Greece, but was filmed entirely in Greece. How did you pull that off?
What we did is, Grant, [supervising art director] Matt [Kerly], Barry, and I transformed the Athens airport into Chicago O'Hare. Grant would do this thing, when we walked through any place—squint his eyes and turn his head sideways and go, “Guys, take a look at this.” And it was always just some vision he had where he'd say, “This looks like Gate 12 at O'Hare.” That's how production designers are! Where normally, we are taking in feelings and sounds and ideas and travel and emotions, production designers see.
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