12 interesting things you probably didn't know about the 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' movies

Five years before the first movie in the "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" franchise made it to screens, lead actor and writer Nia Vardalos created a one-woman stage play about her life.

The play was based on Vardalos' own large, tight-knit Greek Orthodox family in Winnipeg, Canada, and her experience marrying her non-Greek husband, actor Ian Gomez.

The play was a success and attracted the attention of several major Hollywood players, who expressed interest in adapting the play into a feature-length movie. 

Unfortunately, they also tried to convince Vardalos to make significant changes to the story to make it more marketable — such as changing the family's ethnicity, and replacing Vardalos in the lead role, according The Ringer.

It wasn't until actor Rita Wilson, who's married to Tom Hanks, checked out the play and recommended it to her husband that the film found its right backer: Hanks went to see it as well, and agreed to produce the movie with his production company, Playtone.

The first "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" film was something of a sleeper hit. After a limited release in April 2002, it received a wider release worldwide in the summer and quickly became one of the buzziest movies of the year, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

While it never hit the number one spot at the box office, per Box Office Mojo, it made over $368 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing rom-com — and one of the highest-grossing independent films — of all time.

In comparison, the sequel, which was released in 2016, didn't do as well. It earned only $90 million worldwide.

Corbett may seem perfectly cast as high school teacher Ian Miller, but it turns out that Vardalos and producer Gary Goetzman took a chance on him after he was unable to schedule an audition for the movie.

The actor was in Toronto, Canada filming another romantic comedy, "Serendipity," and by pure chance Vardalos and Goetzman found themselves in the same bar as the actor, where he was telling a friend that he had read the script for "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and was upset that he was missing out on the opportunity to land the romantic lead role.

Corbett recalled to Hollywood Jesus: "They introduced themselves, and within ten minutes of meeting them, Gary said, 'Do you want to do it?' I said 'Are you offering me the role?' And they said 'Yes.' A week later I was filming the movie." 

The scene where Toula's aunt Voula (Andrea Martin) grabs Ian's hair after introducing herself to him was actually ad-libbed. 

According to People, Martin had forgotten her next line and was stalling until she remembered what it was she was supposed to say. Vardalos liked the slightly awkward moment so much she decided to keep it in the film.

During Toula and Ian's first date, their table is below a shelf on which two glass jars sit — one containing apples and the other oranges, which sweetly foreshadows the fact that they end up together.

As audiences might recall, Toula explains in the film that her surname, Portokalos, comes from the Greek word for oranges.

Later, on Toula and Ian's wedding day, Toula's father, with his penchant for finding the Greek origin of any word, reveals that Ian's surname also has Greek roots. He says it comes from the Greek word "milo," which means apple.

"We're all different, but, in the end, we're all fruit," he happily concludes.

The actor, best known for his roles in "Felicity and "Cougar Town," played Mike, Ian's best friend. 

He and Vardalous married in 1993 and it was announced in 2018 that Vardalos had filed for divorce from Gomez the previous year, citing "irreconcilable differences." The divorce was finalized in December 2018.

Like his on-screen alter ego, Gomez converted to Greek Orthodoxy upon marrying Vardalos.

On the posters for all three installments in the franchise, the movie's title is styled in a font reminiscent of the Greek alphabet.

As a result, the two E's in the word "Greek" are made to look like the Greek letter Sigma, which actually denotes the letter S, rather than E. So to a Greek reader, the title reads: "My Big Fat Grssk Wedding."

The 2003 series, "My Big Fat Greek Life," featured many of the main actors from the film with the exception of Corbett, who was replaced by Steven Eckholdt due to scheduling conflicts.

The series picks up after the Greek-American lead character (again played by Vardalos but renamed Nia Portokalos for the show) and her non-Greek husband (played by Eckholdt and renamed Thomas Miller for the series) return from their honeymoon. However, it only lasted for seven episodes.

No one can forget that Kostas "Gus" Portokalos' (Michael Constantine) home remedy for "every ailment from psoriasis to poison ivy" was to "put some Windex on it." Turns out, that was lifted directly from Vardalos' own life.

"In old-world Greek tradition, you don't use the proper medicine for a corresponding ailment," Vardalos told Entertainment Weekly in 2002. "My dad accidentally got Windex on a wart and it started to dry out, so he started using it for everything."

Therese Van Ryne, a representative for SC Johnson, the household cleaning supplies that makes Windex, also told Entertainment Weekly in 2002 that the mention of the product in the film resulted in a surprise increase in sales of the ammonia-based cleaner.

However, Van Ryne said she doesn't recommend it for "human surfaces."

Speaking to ABC in 2018, Vardalos explained the mix-up came about after she admitted to the "Sex and the City" star that she was nervous about kissing in front of everyone on set, because she'd never done a kissing scene before.

As a result, she wanted to "get it over with" ahead of time, which led to her and Corbett sharing a rehearsal smooch by the makeup trailers.

"I'm really nervous about everyone seeing it, and could you just — could you just kiss me right now and let's just get it over with?" Vardalos recalled asking Corbett.

"And he goes, 'Right now?' And I go, 'Yeah, just kiss me right now.' And he goes, 'OK.' So he just kissed me, right now. And I was like, 'Oh, that was easy.' So by the time we were on the set filming it four hours later, it was fine. It was easy. I wasn't embarrassed," she continued.

It wasn't until years after filming that the pair found out that someone had seen them after all.

"We found out years later that the hair artist on the movie had come out of the makeup trailer at that moment, seen us kissing, and went, 'Oh, they're having an affair,'" Vardalos said.