CBS hoping for 'Big Fat Greek' hit
By Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service
As her TV series premieres, creator and star of last year's "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" Nia Vardalos marvels at life's detours.
Gannett News Service via CBS
"Sometimes, I have to kind of sit and think, 'Absorb, absorb, absorb' about everything that's happening," she says.
The cast of CBS' "My Big Fat Greek Life," clockwise from top left: Andrea Martin, Louis Mandylor, Gia Carides, Lainie Kazan, Steven Eckholdt, Nia Vardalos and Michael Constantine.
Her movie has become the most profitable independent film in history, earning more than $215 million.
Now comes her comedy series.
"My Big Fat Greek Life" airs tomorrow on CBS, then moves into a regular slot at 8 p.m. Sundays. It starts where the movie ended with Vardalos' character, now named Nia Portokalos (a change from the movie), marrying a non-Greek guy.
It also reunites most of the cast.
On one hand this is a celebration of Vardalos' colorful heritage, on which the film is based. "I have a loud, always-eating Greek family that loves me to the point of suffocation," she says.
Still, it goes beyond that.
"I think it transcends all backgrounds," says Lainie Kazan, who plays Vardalos' mother. "It is universal. My Vietnamese manicurist said, 'It's just like my family.' "
• 8:30 p.m. tomorrow • CBS
Kazan — who is Jewish with roots in Spain — is one of the few non-Greeks in the cast.
'My Big Fat Greek Life'
Even that may be in dispute, Vardalos says. "My dad said to (her), 'Well, Lainie, Alexander the Great went through Spain, so technically, you are Greek.' "
Her dad is like that, she says, forever recalling Greek history. For a time, Vardalos resisted her heritage.
"I didn't want to be Greek," she recalls. "I wanted to be like everyone else at school."
Then she had second thoughts.
"I'd go over to my friends' houses, and their parents wouldn't use a ton of oregano in the food and I would think, 'Well, this tastes boring.'
"And slowly but surely, I just embraced my heritage."
Still, she also found the humor in it. Vardalos, who had been in the Second City comedy troupes of Toronto and Chicago, developed a one-woman show about her life.
When it was originally pitched to CBS, the network rejected it. Still, her stage play had key admirers in actress Rita Wilson and her husband, Tom Hanks.
Like Vardalos, Wilson grew up in a warm, Old World family. "I (was) Greek at home and American at school," Wilson says.
So she went to Vardalos' show and was instantly impressed.
"The theater was so small that Ian (Gomez, Vardalos' husband) was actually doing the box office," Wilson says, "but he was under a code name. I (asked him), 'Is it possible to meet Nia backstage?'
"He goes, 'Well, there's no backstage, but I'll bring her out.' ...
"I said to her, 'This would make a great movie.'
"And she said, 'I have a script.' "
Suddenly, Wilson and Hanks were producing the movie, a broad exaggeration of Vardalos' life.
Made for $5 million, the movie soared past $200 million in the box office, with no end in sight. CBS wanted a series, after all.
Before the movie began, Vardalos fretted that the starring role would go to another Greek actress.
"I was thinking, 'Oh, they could get fantastic Melina Kanakaredes,' but she was pregnant ... Jennifer Aniston was shooting 'Friends."'
Both are better known — and both are ultra-thin.
"I'm a normal person," Vardalos says. "I'm going to gain and lose 20 pounds for the rest of my life."
Luckily, she got to play the title role in the movie.
She also surrounded herself with talented but not widely known stars, including Michael Constantine ("Room 222") and Kazan as her parents. "I was a 40-year overnight success," says Kazan, who was a sexy nightclub singer long before being known as an actress.
In the TV series, two Australian-born actors, Louis Mandylor and Gia Carides (the wife of actor Anthony LaPaglia) play Vardalos' brother and cousin, respectively.
Steven Eckholdt was cast as her husband.
Eckholdt ("Grapevine") is married to a Greek woman, photographer Kirsten Getchell. "Greek families are so incredibly nice and accepting," he says.
They're also outspoken, he found when watching the movie.
"We're sitting in the theater and you could barely hear what was up on the screen, because everyone was talking to each other."
