The Reasoning Behind Meryl'south Mamma Mia! Here Nosotros Go Again Plotline

The following post contains spoilers for the plot of Mamma Mia! Hither We Get Over again.

Even with the warning above, we suggest you pause for a 2d to consider if you really desire to know what happens at the commencement of Mamma Mia! Hither We Go Again. Are y'all sure? Are y'all certain? Are you ready to have a chance on this? Okay, yep, fine, as the film'southward trailers unsaid, they killed Meryl. Donna Sheridan is dead, long live her hotel on the fabricated-up Greek island of Kalokairi.

You tin can balance assured that Streep, who still appears in new scenes in the picture, was fine with the determination — and according to managing director Ol Parker, it wasn't because she had other scheduling obligations. "If it had worked out that Meryl was going to be the atomic number 82 for the whole thing, then they would take waited for a fourth dimension when Meryl could be the lead for the whole matter," Parker said. "Information technology was near finding the best story to tell that worked for everybody and this was the story nosotros settled on."

And then, why, why is Donna Sheridan dead? Blame Richard Curtis, his daughter Scarlett, and The Godfather Part Ii. One day, out of the blue, Parker, who wrote the All-time Exotic Marigold Hotel movies, got an email from Curtis, the man backside Notting Colina and Dear Really, that read, "Random question: do you like ABBA?" "I thought he was going to invite me to dinner with Benny Andersson, since he knows everybody," Parker said. Instead, Curtis, who had been talking with the Mamma Mia! producers, wrote dorsum, "Chance of you writing a sequel?"

Amazing. That would be a hoot, Parker thought. Just he didn't have any ideas. Curtis did, though — or, rather, his girl did. "When the call from the producers came to him he was driving along with his daughter Scarlett and he wondered aloud what the story could be," Parker said, and Scarlett suggested the story "should be Godfather Ii" — as in a sequel that'south actually a prequel. Curtis passed that thought along to Parker, who got excited nearly the thought of exploring the backstory hinted at in Catherine Johnson's plot of the original. Why non go deeper into Donna's diary?

To make it piece of work, however, he knew Donna had to dice. "I call back it'southward the most meaningful and emotional and impactful way to tell that story and this was my proffer," he said of his pitch to both producer Judy Craymer and what Parker said everyone calls the "legacy bandage" of the original movie. "Obviously it was greatly discussed with anybody and Meryl was thrilled and delighted with it." (In the cease, the plots of Hither We Go Again and The Godfather Two actually practise parallel each other well: Lily James is Robert De Niro, the young version of the last film'southward patriarch/dame. Amanda Seyfried is Al Pacino, shoring up the family business in the nowadays — in this example, that business concern is a hotel in Greece, not the mob.)

To write the rest of the picture show's plot, Parker worked his mode through the "puzzle box" of Mamma Mia!'s admittedly complex setup: How do you find a way to assuredly take your lead character take sex with three men within a brusque menstruum of time, and make each event meaningful? "My chore was to give her slightly different reasons for each of the men," Parker said. "Young Harry is comedy and a slight pathos and also charming. Immature Sam is a love story. Young Beak is to help her feel amend from having a cleaved heart."

They besides needed someone who could make a convincing young Donna. For that, Parker insisted on Lily James, who was stuck on the Baby Driver publicity tour while Mamma Mia! was casting, which kept getting extended considering that motion-picture show did then well. "Nosotros were seeing all these brilliant people and I was like we've got to wait, because this girl is amazing" Parker said. They did, and once James came in to audience, "I knew it on a handshake." "It'due south patently a testament to the extraordinary functioning of Lily James that you never judge Donna," he said. "Like Meryl in the get-go one, you but get with it and you take it as a sign of life and vitality and excitement and joy."

After Parker's work on the script, he was surprised as anyone that he also ended up directing the movie. "I imagine several people turned it downwards, simply never told me," he said. As the producers started to schedule shooting times with the legacy cast, and started to cast the younger bandage, "I was like, 'Who is directing this?'" Parker said. "Judy Craymer was like, 'We idea you might.' I pretended I was delighted. Of course I was terrified."

"If I'd known I'd be directing the movie," he added. "I never would have written a dance sequence on a floating boat."

The Story Behind Meryl's Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again Plot