Nia Vardalos: “My Whole Gender Is Looking For Work”

Star and writer of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (which apparently isn’t a patch on the original) Nia Vardalos has spoken out about the death of strong female roles in Hollywood.

In an interview with Katie Couric for Yahoo Global News, Nia made some interesting points about gender equality in the film industry. You can watch the video over yonder, but here’s what shapes Vardalos’ writing process:

?There’s are so many of us who said ?Look I can’t wait for the phone to ring with the job offer. I’m going to call myself and just keep creating my own roles.? But I can’t just do it for me, my whole gender’s out there looking for work, so I wrote very strong roles for the women, but also for the men. Because I keep saying ?we can’t just leave one-half of society out.? We don’t like it when men do it to us in their movies, so you know the men and women are represented in this – like a family.?

On what inspired her to write a follow up to the 2002 hit, she explains it came to her on her daughter’s first day of playschool: ?All the other moms were saying goodbye in a very loving and?they were normal people? And I heard a sound that sounded like a banshee wailing and realised, ?oh it’s me!? I’m crying so loud I was trying to get control of myself and that’s when I realised I couldn’t let go and I have morphed into my own suffocating Greek parents.?