Cher steals Mamma Mia! movie with Spandex and sequins, says Dominic Cooper

Cooper was reunited with his ex girlfriend Amanda Seyfried on set 
“Emotional journey”: Dominic Cooper with Amanda Seyfried and Cher in a scene from Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
The Weekender

Sign up to our free weekly newsletter for exclusive competitions, offers and theatre ticket deals

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

Dominic Cooper has told how Cher surprised the cast of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again when she pulled a pair of sequinned pants from her suitcase to replace her character’s costume.

The south London-born actor was back — after a decade away — on the set of the hugely successful Abba musical. The new movie is a prequel with Lily James playing the younger version of Meryl Streep’s central character in flashbacks.

All the cast of the first film return, with the addition of Cher. Cooper, 40, recalled: “Cher had tried on the costumes and said, ‘No no, I don’t think that’s going to work for me’, and then she went, ‘but I’ve got something perfect’, and she pulled out her suitcase and pulled out this wonderful pair of Spandex-y tight pants with embroidered stars and beautiful sequins. She had come with this most gorgeous outfit. She was brilliant.”

The new movie was filmed on the Croatian island of Vis, reportedly for financial reasons. The set from the Greek island of Skopelos, where Mamma Mia! was filmed, was faithfully recreated. The first film made about £460 million and led to a tourism boom on Skopelos.

Cooper, who played Sky and is now in the series Preacher, told the Standard: “Returning on that set just seemed so peculiar, as it’s 10 years later but feels exactly the same. They have come up with something really fun. It’s very different from the first one… the other one was more just a damn good time, this one would be more of an emotional journey, more reflective.”

Cooper, who had a three-year relationship with his on-screen fiancée Amanda Seyfried, has also previously told how he found it “odd” to be going back to “gazing into each other’s eyes” — but insisted they had remained friends since splitting up.

Dancing queens: Lily James in Mamma Mia! 2

He revealed the cast jumped straight back into their old friendships while filming the new movie: “It was a bunch of old mates meeting on an island again, having a joke again, popping on some Lycra and doing a quick two-shuffle hop-step dance, and then going to the local with Stellan Skarsgård and Colin Firth and talking in our finest Croatian and eating chips.”

After splitting with Seyfried, Cooper had a long-term relationship with Ruth Negga, his co-star on dark comic series Preacher, in which he plays an outlaw priest with super-powers. The series, in its third season, spends six months a year filming in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Cooper plays tennis “every day” to help him cope with 16-hour sessions.

Watch Preacher now on Amazon Prime Video. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is out next month

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in