Nia Vardalos: My Big Fat Greek...Drag Queen?

You've heard the Hollywood Cinderella story of writer/performer Nia Vardalos, a nice Greek girl who wrote a play that happened to get seen by Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson and the rest is My Big Fat Greek Wedding history. Pretty, warm and funny, Nia is still unaffected by her fame and loves to hug and chat, especially about her latest writing/starring vehicle the "girls pretending to be guys pretending to be girls" comedy Connie and Carla in which she co-stars with Muriel's Wedding alum Toni Collette.

Nia is full of bubbly energy. Those big baby brown eyes are alert and sparkling when she talks and she is obviously very proud of her work in the film; a female buddy comedy with some great show tunes...all actually sung by Nia and Broadway alum Toni.

TeenHollywood: Do you see any parallels between this character and the one in My Big Fat Greek Wedding?

Nia: I have this theory of life that there are four popular people in high school and then there are the rest of us. I write movies for the rest of us who never peaked in high school. For those people that did peak in high school and then realized later that it's all downhill, welcome to the movie as well. That's kind of how I go through life. I like being a bit of a loser. I think it's funny when I run into my ex-boyfriend on the street and a bird craps on my head. I just think we all feel that way. I think we all feel like we don't fit in.

TeenHollywood: Which character are you most like, this one or the "Greek Wedding" one?

Nia: I think I'm a mix of both. I am you and you and you (looking at journalists) and my favorite thing in the world is when people come up to me on the street and go 'I am you. I am Israeli and I married a man from Scotland'. I love hearing everyone's story. Everybody feels like every woman and every man. That's why we all relate to Oprah. I think so. I do. I am a black woman. (laughter).

TeenHollywood: How did you research for the drag queen sequences?

Nia: We went to a lot of drag clubs. Right before Michael (Lembeck, the director) came in, I was writing the script and going to the Queen Mary in the (San Fernando) valley and asking so many questions that I'm sure they thought I was bi-curious. One of the things that the drag queens said to me was 'please don't make fun of us'. So, I felt the burden of all drag queens on my shoulders, boa included, and we made sure that we never had a feeling on the set of laughing at as opposed to laughing with.

TeenHollywood: What did you learn from them?

Nia: We learned things like 'drag bag'. That's the bag that you toss over your shoulder that has all of your make-up and fishnet stockings in it also known to us a purse but not anymore. They taught us little tricks like when we were dancing in panty hose and open-toed shoes, your foot slides forward when you are dancing and Robert Keiser showed us you take the sole of the shoe and spray hairspray on it and wait until it gets just a little bit tacky, then you put your shoe on and you can dance and your foot doesn't go anywhere.

TeenHollywood: One of the messages in this movie is being true to yourself. It was also in "Greek Wedding" and that's a trait of yours. Where does that come from in life?

Nia: As you know from the documentary that is My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I have an incredible family that is so supportive. They showed up to this movie as well. That's where it comes from. They do actually exist, these twenty-seven first cousins who will call me up and say 'don't wear your hair like that. You're not a rock star. Get real'.

TeenHollywood: This script was tucked away in your desk drawer. How many screenplays do you have tucked away?

Nia: I like to write about pieces of my life and I've had a lot of facets of my life. I was a florist when I was going through theater school so one day, maybe I'll write about that. Right now I have two or three ideas that I'm working on. I write a draft of it then I'll leave it for a while which is, I think, the way to germinate. You let it grow and then go back and fix it.

TeenHollywood: What is your writing process? And, how was Connie and Carla created?

Nia: I call it vomit writing. What I do is write, write, write. My first draft is about two hundred and fifty pages long. All I really wanted to do was write a movie where I get to sing. I thought that would really be fun. And so, I sat down and wrote a relationship that mirrored my best friend Kathy Greenwood and my real cousin Nicky who were really close and would always get in trouble. I wanted to write a positive female friendship that wouldn't be a chick flick and wouldn't turn off men. So I thought it would be fun if these girls were like broads. I thought, this has to happen to Connie and Carla. They get in trouble, that's good. Keep going and I kept writing and writing and they get to L.A. and they're in a bar having a drink and then what else could go wrong? Oh, the two guys they think are their dates kiss. Then the drag show starts and then I thought, 'oh my god'.. this is the way that they can pursue their dream! When the drag idea went into my head it was like every hair on my body stood on end and, being a Greek girl, that's a lot of hair'. Then I pare it down. Michael came in and said 'I think this relationship could be stronger. I think Connie and Carla need to have different voices'. So then I went back and rewrote and rewrote. But, Michael never changed a word of that script unless we talked first. We worked together. We collaborated.

TeenHollywood: Classic star Debbie Reynolds is in the film. Was she always your first choice?

Nia: The obvious choices that we love and I love personally, are Barbra Streisand, Liza Minelli, Shirley Jones. We love them all but no one else had a dinner theater like Debbie Reynolds did. It had to be her.

TeenHollywood: Will there be any funny outtakes on the DVD?

Nia: We laughed so hard through the making of this. Toni and I would fall on each other and laugh. At one point, we had to run into a shot, turn to each other and start talking right away. We ran in. I tripped because we always had those big heels on, I fell. She fell on top of me. She got up, gave me a hand to get up and I accidentally touched her in a private area. It's all on film.

TeenHollywood: This "girl playing a guy who is playing a girl" or vice versa is a big theme in movies. Is there a tribute to Some Like it Hot in your movie and how hard was it to play?

Nia: I feel like there are a lot of these movies like Victor Victoria and Sister Act and Shakespeare in Love and all the Shakespeare plays that involve cross dressing. If we could slide easily into that genre, I would be absolutely honored to be included. There's also a tip of the hat to Thelma and Louise. Michael helped me a lot with trying to be a man trying to be a woman. Sometimes, even I was confused. Michael told me that when my mouth is open, it's more feminine and when it's closed, it's more of a masculine line. I was doing a shot where I was listening and apparently, my mouth was open and from off camera during the scene Michael goes 'Nia. Close your mouth!'. I wanted to go 'you close yours'. I tried to dance like a man, not exactly as feminine as I wanted to be. The way that the drag queens did dance.

TeenHollywood: You rewrote some on the set. Were you open to actors' suggestions?

Nia: They knew their characters so well. They would come to me with the ideas. Our make-up call was four a.m. I have a little MAC laptop and I would rewrite while I was getting my make-up done, give the whole laptop to somebody who would take it to a production office, plug it in and generate new sides for the actors. I loved that they would learn new lines. Some scenes are exactly from the first draft and sometimes (the actors) would get too far ahead of themselves and we'd have to go 'okay, no. We're going to shoot the scenes as is'. The joke that I said afterwards was I was not going to write for months but lay on the beach in a cotton shift, eat fudgecicles and not even have a barrette in my hair because I was so tired of being dragged up.

TeenHollywood: You reteamed with Rita Wilson who is a co-producer on this. Is that a "marriage" now?

Nia: "Greek Wedding" came out April 19th and by November 9th, I was hosting "Saturday Night Live". That's a crazy six months. For me to go into a new world, even though Michael and I had known each other, we had worked together on a t.v. show before, I thought, 'I can not go into this world without taking a piece of my past with me'. So, I grabbed Rita Wilson along for the ride.

TeenHollywood: Talk about the chemistry between you and Toni.

Nia: I love it that at one of the test screenings a woman raised her hand and said "We're those two girls best friends before?". I love that. We met Toni came in, we hugged, walked to the piano, started singing and looked at each other like 'what's going on?' Our voices blended so well, it was just weird. I feel that, with the movie, you just buy a ticket and get on that ride and that's how we felt too. Two women who love musical theater met across an ocean from each other and got to make this movie. We just felt that we were lucky every day.

TeenHollywood: Was it sad for you when your spin-off t.v. show failed and secondly, having written these comic, real characters, how hard is it for you to look at other scripts sent to you as an actress that might not live up to your work?

Nia: Hey, I love my cast and we see each other at lunches and dinner now so that's the great thing about that. The second part is, I love being an actor and I'm getting scripts sent to me that I would never have gotten two years ago in my life. Chances to play extraordinary roles. It would be a gift, at this point to be able to take somebody else's words and create a character. I don't like wearing a lot of hats.

TeenHollywood: What are you doing now?

Nia: This (interviews). I took time off to talk about this movie and I'm starting something I think in June but I don't' want to talk about it because it hasn't been announced but there's no nudity in it.

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.