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Cher and Meryl Streep
Cher plays Meryl Streep’s mother in the film Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, which will be in cinemas on Friday. Photograph: Universal Pictures
Cher plays Meryl Streep’s mother in the film Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, which will be in cinemas on Friday. Photograph: Universal Pictures

Mamma Mia 2 makers hope to repeat box office success

This article is more than 5 years old

My my, how can fans resist Cher singing Fernando and playing Meryl Streep’s mum?

Can they do it again? The makers of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again certainly hope they can persuade audiences to pack their fantasy swimsuits and mosquito repellent next weekend for another fictional cinematic holiday on their ideal Greek island.

Cher, along with most of the stars of the first film, which made £466m at the box office a decade ago, gathered together in London on Saturday, ahead of the 20 July release of the follow-up musical.

“I was terrified when I first arrived on set,” Cher told her co-stars. “partly because everyone had been working together already, and partly because my character wasn’t very liked.”

The singing superstar appears in the film in a blond wig as a reluctant “mean grandmother”, Ruby, chiefly to sing a version of Fernando with Andy Garcia. “In America we knew the Abba biggest hits. But when I heard Fernando, I heard a different thing. I heard the acting of it. I didn’t realise how complicated Abba songs are,” she said.

Cher, 72, is in fact only three years older than Meryl Streep, her on-screen daughter Donna.

The singer said her confidence on location was boosted by the discovery that Streep was watching her perform from behind a piece of scenery and approved.

Benny Andersson of Abba said he had waited to find the right songs to drive forward a new story, although three are reprised: Dancing Queen, Mamma Mia and I Have a Dream.

Amanda Seyfried returns in the role of Sophie, Donna’s daughter. She said: “Singing the song My Love, My Life was the most emotional thing for me, and my favourite moment.”

Lily James is the star of the new film. She plays the young Donna in the backstory that forms much of the plot of Here We Go Again.

“The character of Donna is the most beloved and extraordinary woman, and Meryl is all that too,” James said, adding that she had prepared for the prequel role by watching how Streep moved in the first film and then just trying to “live in the moment, which is what this film is all about anyway”.

James, who appears in flashback sequences, is a new arrival on the island and she is courted by younger versions of the three men who fans of the first film know as the rival putative fathers to Sophie. This trio of middle-aged lovers, played by Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard a decade ago, also return to the screen.

And Donna’s friends Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski) reappear as well.

Judy Craymer, the 60-year-old British producer behind the stage musical and the films, is believed to have earned a £90m fortune from the romantic story she dreamed up in her 20s after meeting Andersson and his Abba collaborator, Björn Ulvaeus, while working as Tim Rice’s assistant on their stage show Chess.

Mamma Mia!, which cost £28m to make, was filmed on the Aegean island of Skopelos and became the highest-grossing musical film in the world.

Here We Go Again was shot on the Croatian island of Vis. Screenwriter Richard Curtis, best known for Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually, helped Craymer and writer and director Ol Parker with development of the script. Executive producers Andersson and Ulvaeus can also be spotted making fleeting appearances in the new film.

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