In 2002, the world of rom-coms was forever changed with the release of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, written by and co-starring Nia Vardalos. The riotous film about a Greek woman falling for a non-Greek man and the cultural complications their love creates with her family was carried to near-overnight success through stellar word of mouth, grossing $368.7 million at the global box office and launching a franchise all its own. Before appearing on the big screen, however, it began on the stage as a 45-minute monologue workshop built from Vardalos’ family experiences as a woman with Greek heritage. Those humble, deeply personal roots were the foundation of the final film when Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson came forward to help produce, but there were other sources of inspiration that Vardalos looked to when writing her breakout, Oscar-nominated script.

Besides its comedic moments and memorable lines about the use of Windex as a cure-all, MBFGW was hailed for its deeply human depiction of a proud Greek family in all their eccentric glory. Vardalos infused her Greek heritage into every corner of the film, yet also hit at relationship dynamics and emotional truths that many families could relate to. Much of the comedy and the characters’ individual quirks were informed by her family and memories, adding a bit of heart to the laughter. During a panel moderated by Collider’s Maggie Lovitt at FanX Salt Lake City over the weekend, however, she credited the overall balance to a one-woman play by Julia Sweeney, executive produced by Quentin Tarantino. When asked about how she makes both the heavier subjects and serious truths of the My Big Fat Greek Wedding series work with the more laugh-out-loud and absurd moments, Vardalos first drove home how directly her family has inspired some of the most absurd lines and jokes that could not have been made up in a writer’s room. “Everyone is so funny in my family,” she shared. “My mom actually did say to me, ‘Greek women, we may be lambs in the kitchen, but we’re tigers in the bedroom. Actually said it. I really do have an Aunt Voula who has a lump on the back of her neck that she claims is her twin. These movies just write themselves.” It was seeing Sweeney’s God Said Ha, however, that became her blueprint to create a story that is both hilarious yet serious in its messaging.
“But I balanced because when I was writing the first movie, I had seen Julia Sweeney’s solo show, God Said Ha. And that show is about how she went through cancer at the same time as her brother, and I’m telling you, it’s one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen. How did she do it? Because she told the real truth, and I realized the truth is funnier, so I just try and always just write the truth.”

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes
Which Iconic Romance Is Your Favorite?
Harry & Sally · Love & Basketball · Heated Rivalry · Titanic

Four great love stories, and four completely different ideas of what love actually is. One is a friendship that took twelve years to admit itself. One is two people who refuse to stop competing. One happens entirely behind closed doors. And one lasts five days and never stops mattering. Eight questions decide which one is really yours.

Harry & Sally(1989)

Love & Basketball(2000)

Heated Rivalry(HBO Max)

Titanic(1997)

FIND YOUR ROMANCE →

01
How does your love story start?
The first scene tells you what kind of story this is going to be.

AWe are friends for years before either of us says anything.
BWe want the same thing and neither of us backs down.
CNobody can know, including our closest friends.
DOne look across a room and everything changes.

NEXT QUESTION →

02
What do the two of you keep arguing about?
Every great romance has one fight it has over and over.

AWhether this is actually happening, and what to call it.
BWhose career comes first this year.
CWhether we will ever be honest about this in public.
DNothing small. When we fight, it is about everything.

NEXT QUESTION →

03
How do you show somebody that you love them?
Grand gestures are easy to write. This is the harder question.

AI remember every single thing they have told me.
BI show up to the things that matter to them.
CI keep their secrets like they are my own.
DI would give up something enormous for them.

NEXT QUESTION →

04
What is actually standing in the way?
There is always something. Which something tells you the genre.

ATiming. We keep finding each other at the wrong moment.
BAmbition. We both want big lives and they do not match.
CThe world. It is not safe to be open about this yet.
DEverybody around us has decided this cannot happen.

NEXT QUESTION →

05
Which romantic moment gets you every single time?
Be honest. There is one that works on you and you know which.

ASomebody running across a city to say it before midnight.
BSomebody in the stands who stayed until the very end.
CA look across a crowded room that nobody else catches.
DSomebody promising to hold on, and meaning it.

NEXT QUESTION →

06
What would you actually risk for the right person?
Every romance asks this. Most people find out far too late.

AA friendship I could never get back.
BThe plan I have had for my life since I was a kid.
CMy privacy. All of it would become public.
DEverything. I would not think about it for long.

NEXT QUESTION →

07
Where are the two of you in ten years?
Some love stories are about the meeting. Some are about the staying.

AStill talking. We have never run out of things to say.
BBuilding something together, both of us still ambitious.
CFinally open about it, after years of being careful.
DApart, and I still think about it constantly.

NEXT QUESTION →

08
Which of these sounds most like something you would say?
Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your romance.

AI would rather talk to you than anybody else, forever.
BI am not giving up either of us. We find a way to have both.
CThis is mine, and I am not explaining it to anyone.
DI would do the whole thing again, even knowing how it ends.

REVEAL MY ROMANCE →

Roll The Credits
Your Romance Is…
Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to
be somebody’s person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of
you.

When Harry Met Sally · 1989

Harry & Sally
You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have
already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most
durable way anybody has found to do this.

When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy,
conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening.
You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is
doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers.
The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly
until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it.
You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.

Love & Basketball · 2000

Love & Basketball
You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own
life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the
relationship easier.

This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of
them equally seriously.
You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a
rival, and that never entirely goes away.
It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each
other, but whose turn it is this year.
You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.

Heated Rivalry · Rachel Reid · HBO Max 2025

Heated Rivalry
The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are
drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting
somebody you are not supposed to want.

Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides,
meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned.
You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things
more real than public ones.
The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what
it would cost either one to say it out loud.
Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally
stop hiding.

Titanic · 1997

Titanic
You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is
immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version
of it.

Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five
days, which is precisely the point of it.
You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats
decades of something merely comfortable.
The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an
enormous life afterwards because of it.
You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the
same way.

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‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ Nearly Included a Dirty Joke That Test Audiences Hated

Another key to making My Big Fat Greek Wedding resonate as well as it did was Vardalos’ commitment to creating something the entire family could sit down and watch together. She relied heavily on test audiences to narrow down the feel of the film’s comedy and see what worked with viewers. The desire to laugh along with beloved company was felt in the reactions, to the point where she revealed the team cut one particularly dirty joke that completely lost viewers who had otherwise been fully on board with her style of storytelling and humor. In the end, personal experience, creative inspiration, and feedback from the people she wanted to appeal to most came together into a perfect rom-com storm.
“And I love these test screenings because you get to see when a joke lands and when it doesn’t. We had a very dirty joke in My Big Fat Greek Wedding one and when the family is sitting together and they’re planning the wedding invitations, and I watched in the test screening. The audience was with us and they were with us and then that dirty joke came and they went, no. And so we cut the dirty joke because we wanted to be able to watch it with our families.”
My Big Fat Greek Wedding is currently streaming on HBO Max. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the future of the franchise.

Release Date

April 19, 2002

Runtime

95 minutes

Director

Joel Zwick

Writers

Nia Vardalos

Producers

Gary Goetzman, Rita Wilson, Tom Hanks

Nia Vardalos

Fotoula “Toula” Portokalos