You’re the father! The Mamma Mia! films never revealed the true parentage of Amanda Seyfried’s character, Sophie, but the actress has a guess of her own.
Out of Sophie’s three potential biological fathers — Pierce Brosnan’s Sam, Stellan Skarsgård’s Bill and Colin Firth’s Harry — The Dropout star revealed in a Vanity Fair video posted on Wednesday, February 22, “I always, like, secretly hoped it was Stellan that was really her father — Bill, I’m sorry. Bill.”
The reasoning behind her pick? She cited the scene from the film in which Sophie confronts Bill about whether or not he could be her father at her bachelorette party, calling it “one of the purest moments in the movie.”
“There’s a lot of pride in Stellan, and also a lot of shock and fear,” the Mean Girls alum explained. “But also, just full acceptance in the space of such a small amount of time, and it’s a full circle moment. It’s beautiful. It’s funny, too. Comedically, he’s also just very skilled.”
Not to mention, she finds the idea of Bill being the father ironic, as she thinks he was “the person who seems the least likely to wanna have kids” out of the trio of dads.
Fans of the film —and its 2018 sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again — know that Bill has a connection to the fictional Greek island Kalokari, the place in which Meryl Streep’s Donna first met and hooked up with each of the fathers. As explained in the movie, Donna named Sophie after Bill’s great-aunt Sophia (played by Maria Vacratsis in the sequel) and was left money by Sophia to start her hotel after her death.
According to Seyfried, there’s a deleted scene from Mamma Mia! that further hinted at Bill being Donna’s fellow parent. “There is a scene that was cut of a song called ‘Name of the Game’ and we sing it together,” Seyfried —who shares daughter Nina, 5, and son Thomas, 2, with husband Thomas Sadoski — revealed. “And I’m singing, begging him, like, ‘What’s the name of the game?’ and I just really love that moment with him. We had a lot of fun. We got really tight.”
Now an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress for her role as Elizabeth Holmes in Hulu’s The Dropout, Seyfried went on to credit the movie-musical as “the movie that changed my life.”
She continued: “I went from getting guest stars, doing small movies, for the most part, to being the front and center character in a massive, massive movie. I get to work with all these incredible people.”
In a June 2020 interview with Collider, the star weighed in on whether she’d be interested in doing a third film. And while the idea excites her, Seyfried questioned whether or not there’s enough material to create another story from. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, and I hope I’m wrong again. I don’t think there are enough ABBA songs to make a third movie,” she admitted at the time. “Because we’d have to use ‘Super Trooper’ again and we’d have to use ‘Mamma Mia’ again and have to use them in a different way.”
The Mamma Mia! movie franchise also starred Christine Baranski and Julie Walters as Donna’s best friends Tanya and Rosie, respectively, as well as Dominic Cooper as Sophie’s fiancé, Sky. Lily James starred as a young Donna in Here We Go Again, which also featured Cher as Donna’s mother, Ruby.
