Nia Vardalos on the Key to Comedic Chemistry in Audio

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Katie O’Connor: Hi, listeners. I'm Audible Editor Katie O'Connor, and today I'm thrilled to be speaking with Academy Award–nominated writer and actress Nia Vardalos. Nia's new comedy, Motivated!, is an Audible Original podcast about dueling radio hosts who are determined to best each other. Welcome, Nia.

Nia Vardalos: Hi! How are you?

KO: I'm doing well. How are you doing?

NV: Great. Thank you.

KO: So, we heard from our friends here at Audible that these characters in Motivated! actually originated from impersonations that you and Rob Riggle used to do on set. Can you share with our listeners more about the origin story behind Motivated!?

NV: Sure. The story will start with a name drop. Tom Hanks and I—there you go—wrote a movie together and it's called Larry Crowne. And Tom directed it as well. And he cast comedy vet Rob Riggle, who I'd never met, which was weird because we have so many friends in common. We immediately played “Who do we know?” And between all the SNL alums who were also Second City alums, we had a lot of friends in common. So we became immediate friends on set. I was on set as the co-writer, and I was not in the film, so I had a lot of free time, as did Rob. So we started doing these motivational speakers. We were at, I think, a Kmart, filming, and we would go up to people and just motivate them to learn their lines, or "We feel that you want to buy that garden hose, and here's how it's going to change your life."

And we just started doing these motivational speakers. And one of the producers of the film, I think to get us to stop talking, said, "You two should write that as a movie." And we were like, "Challenge accepted, sir." And then we sat down and started writing in my office. And I had never written an R comedy as a film, and it was really freeing. I tend to stay in the "films you could watch with your whole family." I pushed the envelope a little bit with I Hate Valentine's Day, which was about sexual activity, but this was full R and I loved it. It was very, very fun. And then we approached Audible and asked, "Hey, do you want to buy our ridiculous musings?" And they said, "Yes." And we turned it into a 10-part series.

KO: Amazing. And you have quite the cast in this series. Speaking of Tom Hanks, yes, he does a cameo. You have Rob Riggle as the station manager, Clark, Janelle James as your counterpart, Charlyne Yi, Matt Bomer. I could go on and on and on. Could you talk about how this amazing cast came together?

NV: We reached out to friends. Mark Baldez reached out to his friend Uktarsh [Ambudkar]. I reached out to my friend Boris Kodjoe, and Matt Bomer, and obviously Tom Hanks. Rob Riggle reached out to his friends. We found Charlyne Yi. It was about reaching out to friends that you want to play with.

"I always try to cast someone way more cool than me, because I am the perennial nerd...And Janelle James is cool."

I think what happened during the pandemic is everyone realized, “We're isolated and we miss our friends.” So, we had this opportunity, you know, stick a Q-tip up your nose, clear yourself from COVID, come into our recording studio, and we could have some fun. And that's all we did. We just kept bringing our friends in, giving them roles. We have Suzy Nakamura playing a whole bunch of roles too. I feel like we got away with murder. At some point I expected Audible to be like, "Hey, you two! What are you doing?" And they just let us do what we wanted, which, again, to any creative person out there, I cannot sing highly enough the praises of Audible, who just had excellent notes and let us do our thing. It's a lovely combination.

KO: That sounds like it was a really freeing experience too. And I saw on social media some pictures of you guys coming together to do the recording. So were you able to do it all together in a studio, the whole thing?

NV: Yes, we had a studio and we did it in person because there's something about eye contact, I think, when performing comedy, and also the give-and-take of it and the timing. When we decided to change the motivational speakers to two women in a radio station and we brought in Janelle James, we thought it would be so much fun to write Rob Riggle the role of the person who has a massive crush on me, which was my favorite thing to keep writing, him calling me beautiful. I would just add lines of him calling me beautiful.

And that was important for us, we felt, to do it in person. So Rob and I were in separate studios with headphones on, but looking at each other on a link. And it was really creative; there was a creative spark to be able to just play off each other, because that's how it started.

KO: That makes sense. And I think the eye contact thing, too, really resonates, because yes, you and Rob have this wonderful chemistry. But so do you and Janelle James. I loved how you two played off of each other. What do you think that special sauce was that made you two have such great chemistry?

NV: I always try to cast someone way more cool than me, because I am the perennial nerd. And it's my sweet spot that I enjoy playing, because it's very close to home. I will never be cool. And Janelle James is cool. She just had that thing where when she would go, "Shut up, Candace," and I'd be like, "Shut up, Misty." It just made me laugh that she fell into it very, very easily. She said the same thing as you, like, "How did you bring in all these people to do the roles?" And I said, "Well, we brought in people that we were friends with and people like you that I want to be friends with." And she was like, "Oh, you think we're going to be friends, huh?" Over lunch. And I was like, "Yeah, Janelle, you're going to be my friend, okay?"

KO: You don't have a choice [laughs].

NV: Yeah. That is a weird thing, chemistry, huh? It's either there or it's not. And when it is there, it's to be valued.

KO: Yeah, absolutely. Now, you and Janelle as Candace and Misty are obviously a bit problematic with the advice that they give to their callers and the way that they address their own personal problems as well. So what do you hope listeners take away from their respective journeys?

NV: I honestly think, anyone who has ever been in therapy, there is a turning point in the moment you realize your therapist is a human being and not an all-knowing seer. And so we wanted to play these characters of real people doling out advice that if they themselves would take it, they would live much more holistically satisfying lives.

Of course, no one takes their own advice. We're all experts in the messed-up problems of all our friends. But all of us just think nothing's going to fix the problems of our own lives, or we make choices that are really going to take us down a bad path. But that's what makes us awesome. And that's what we do.

KO: I love that. So, you are the creator, writer, and executive producer of Motivated!, as well as one of the stars. And you're no stranger to pulling this kind of double duty with writing and performing, or even triple duty, sometimes quadruple duty we're talking about here. But when you perform, do you ever feel your writer hat coming back on and find yourself wanting to change lines as you go?

NV: Always. It's a problem, actually, because a writer loves to rewrite, and especially with comedy, quite often, you know, there's music in the words. So, if I say, "I felt this," and the person says back, "Well, I wanted this," you suddenly realize in the moment it would sing better if I say, "I felt this," and the person went, "Well, I felt this," or, "I thought you were wrong."

And so I'm constantly finding comedy nuggets and going, "Can you say this? Can you say that?" I do tend to cast people who are quick-witted and verbally facile and able to take on changes. It's harder on film, because I'll find a nugget and then just go, "I need five minutes," and then I'll rewrite and then bring back pages. In audio, it's way easier, because you can just go, "Do you have a pencil in your booth?" and then just change their lines. So, the long answer is writers rewrite constantly. I don't know, I think it's never really done. Even now when I'm listening to it, I think, "Oh, I would add this." I think I really got to know the characters during the recording. I keep wanting to say filming, and I guess it is filming in a way.

KO: Yeah. Especially since you got to be together. I think that's interesting, what you were saying there, that as the writer, you do get to inhabit all of the characters as you're going along, as you're creating this world. But I was curious, you mentioned that you would just take your pencil, go into the booth, change something. But did your approach to writing or even to performing change at all, given that this was for audio only versus for the screen?

NV: Yeah, I really don't want to blow smoke, but I have to tell you, Kate Navin at Audible was extremely helpful in the process of writing for audio. In a play, for example, you allow room for things to stretch out. In a film, you cut quickly. You get to the meat of a scene and you get out, and that's what keeps a film alive. It keeps an audience going, “Where are we going next?” Whereas in audio, you lessen the locations and strengthen the relationships through words. In film, it's through eye contact and emotions that you feel, and you see it in the film. But in audio, all you've got are the words and the voice and the tone.

So, I loved the challenge of it. The short story long, long story short, is this: There is room in audio for communication without eye contact. And that challenge was really empowering. I loved it. It was hard. It was interesting. You know, now I've written a play, a book, an audio series, and some films. I don't think I'm great at any of them. Each one informs the other. You go back in and I think, "Oh, that's going to change the way I write film. That's going to change the way I write a second book." Writing is writing, but there are disciplines within each form of it.

KO: I love that. I love that drive to challenge yourself and to work to perfect your craft in different areas. But I'm going to have to disagree and say that you are great at all of them.

NV: That's super nice.

KO: Can you talk to me about your writing setup? When you are in that mode of "You know what? I need to sit down. I need to create right now," what does that look like for you?

NV: I have an office. I'm sitting in it right now. It's quite plain. I have Wi-Fi, but I turn it off. I'm currently editing My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, but my process when I'm not going to work at a studio is this: I get my daughter to school. I exercise. I shower. I wear clothes. I don't write in pajamas or sweats or anything. I wear clothes as if I'm going to work, and I'll sit down and I'll write immediately. Don't check email. If it's important, someone's going to call you. Don't check news. Don't do anything that's going to distract you from the task of creating. I always say don't read other people's things before you've written something of your own.

"There is room in audio for communication without eye contact. And that challenge was really empowering."

To name drop another person, Cheryl Strayed, whose book I adapted into a play, told me that one of her writing processes is to read something of someone she admires before she writes. And it's not as if it becomes aspirational or it becomes self-doubting. What it does is it puts words into her body. And that really helped me, just really helped me.

Like, I'll just pick up something. I'll wake up and I'll read a book which inspires me much more than doing this [picks up phone]. Looking at your phone, to me, is the death of creativity. And I write until it doesn't come anymore and I don't judge. So I'll write fat. That's what I call it. Fat is kind of my favorite word. I just get it out, and then save and go eat something, drink something, get away from your computer and your workspace and then come back and read it. Read it, maybe even print it. We process material in a different way than in the scroll, than in the page-turn. And then go back. And that's it. Like that, to me, is how I write.

Of course, everyone's got a different process. I know one man who writes in a yellow bathrobe. That's his uniform. He writes at four o'clock in the morning. There are just all different times. Sometimes that does work for me, by the way. I'll get up and write before my daughter is up.

For me, you just can't force creativity. So, sometimes you're supposed to go shopping. Sometimes you're supposed to go to the grocery store with your three kids. The very final moments of My Big Fat Greek Wedding did not come to me until I was sitting in the backyard at my place that I was renting in Los Angeles. And there was a lemon tree. And I remember looking up at it and thinking, "What's the word for lemon in Greek?" Because I was so immersed in this Greek world. "Huh. What's the word for orange? What's the word for apple?" In that letting your mind go—I was sitting back there eating a snack and suddenly realized that milo [apple] is close to the word Miller, and that orange is portokali in Greek. And I realized if I named the family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding Portokalos and I named the groom Miller, I could make an apples and oranges joke to end the film. And I went backwards through the script and dotted it in.

KO: I just got chills.

NV: These are the things that come to you at rest. So I think at rest is good.

KO: So, speaking of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I do want to say congratulations. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3. Your photos from filming in Greece this summer were giving me such wanderlust. And I'm just so excited that we're going to get to see the family there. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about this experience and what it was like being together again?

NV: Well, we're loud. Oh my God, we're the loudest family. I mean, I would say “cut” and everyone just immediately started talking. Crew too. It was such a funny, loud set. And so it was great to see each other. A lot of us do see each other a lot. We're very, very, very close. Because something happened to us, you know, together, with the first movie. It was us that it happened to, not me. So that was wonderful to share it with them, and we continue to share it. We see each other for lunches, but we haven't seen the older sister. She lives in Athens. We haven't seen the brother in-law, he lives in Toronto, you know, stuff like that.

So, it was really, really great for us all to be together. And I had the idea during 1, actually, that eventually we travel to Greece. How? I wanted it to be at the end of 1, but of course, budgetarily, we couldn't do it. And so that is the story. The family goes to Greece. And that's what we did. We filmed in Greece, impossibly. They have a 40 percent tax credit, which was super good for an independent film. Even though we're distributed by Universal, we're indies still. We're an indie film. And so we were all together, sweating in the sun, eating our weight in feta, and just having a blast. So many times I just kept looking around going, "How on earth did they let me do this?"

KO: Well, I'll be going with my whole family to see it. I can't wait. Are you an audio listener?

NV: I listen to Malcolm Gladwell. I like Busy Phillips' show. Growing up ethnic, you like the sound of people talking. So, I do like it in my ear, yeah.

KO: I was curious if there were certain genres or types of listening experiences that you gravitate towards, so that's interesting, sort of that talk-podcast format is really resonant with you. That makes sense.

NV: Yeah. I like to hear opinions. I like to learn. I had a friend who told me this, that he noticed that I like to learn something every day. And I do. I do! If you don't learn something every day about yourself, about the way you work, about others, about your communication skills and what might be lacking. If you haven't learned every day, you’re kind of creatively dead. So, I do like it. I like to hear how other people do things.

"I realized if I named the family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding Portokalos and I named the groom Miller, I could make an apples and oranges joke to end the film."

KO: So, I want to ask you what's next for you, but I feel like a million things are next for you. It just sounds like you have all of these wonderful things going on at once.

NV: I'm going to try to get a drama financed. That's what I'm going to do next. It's a film. My play has been licensed in Australia and the UK. So, I'm either going to be in it or go to help advertise it. And then I don't know. I don't know. I have a couple of Netflix movies coming out. One is a Halloween movie, and one is the Guillermo del Toro series. I went and did a cameo for my friend Catherine Hardwicke. Another name drop! You are welcome!

KO: You're full of the best name drops today.

NV: I’m so not Winnipeg. I've changed, you guys. I've changed.

KO: Well, congratulations on all of this.

NV: Thank you. I'm really, really focused on the edit right now, because it's finite. You have eight weeks, with the Directors Guild of America, eight to 10 weeks to really turn in your cut. It's like, “Ooh! Okay.” So, I go there every day and just look at my shot lists and remember the footage. And I have a wonderful editor, Annette Davey. And she did Maid and Waitress. And then also we had an excellent director of photography, Barry Peterson. Also Canadian. And so that worked out great. The footage is just beautiful. We just wanted to make a really, really beautiful film. I called it, “Call Me by Your Name, But in Greece.”

KO: That's awesome. Well, we will be here ready to listen to and to watch whatever is next for you. And now courtesy of Neo [Katie's cousin], which, Neo, you're on the hook if I get this wrong. I'm going to try and say two things to you.

NV: Okay.

KO: God help me. Efharistó?

NV: Nice. You said "thank you."

KO: Great. And, Mou árese polí to vivlío sou.

NV: You liked my book?

KO: I did!

NV: Oh, that's amazing!

KO: Did I get that right?

NV: Yes! Okay. Now I have a message for Neo. [In Greek] I hope that you guys had a good time in Greece and in Cyprus, and I hope I get to meet you one day.

KO: I'm going to keep that on recording and not try and write that down [laughs]. I will send that right back to him.

NV: Okay. Also, just a huge shout-out to what we tried to do with Motivated!. We wanted to say that the abuse of power is not gender-specific. And quite often these roles of two people feuding are written for men. Or if it's two women feuding, it's your urge sometimes to make it about a guy or a this or a past or a wedding or a something. And we just tried really, really hard to not fall into the tropes. We probably hit a few. You know, we're not geniuses, but we just tried really hard to create something that we hope resonates with people, whoever had a work conflict with anyone.

KO: Yes. I think you all delivered on that, and hopefully we can see more from Candace and Misty soon.

NV: I hope so.

KO: And listeners, you can get Motivated! right now on Audible.

NV: Take care. Bye!

KO: Take care. Bye.