Meryl Streep teased that she is in talks to reprise her role as Donna Sheridan in the third installment of Mamma Mia!
“Of course I want to do it. I think folks love it,” Streep, 74, told Deadline on Tuesday, May 14, at the Cannes Film Festival’s opening ceremony at the Grand Théâtre Lumière.
The actress noted that a meeting where she’ll hear proposals for her to return is “imminent,” and she’s curious to hear how producer Judy Craymer has gotten around the fact that her character died in between the 2008 OG movie and the 2018 sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.
“I don’t know how they’re going to do it. They have an idea. I haven’t heard it yet,” Streep said. “I’m going to hear about it pretty soon.”
Streep’s longtime agent, Kevin Huvane, added, “We’re optimistic about it.”
After portraying the lead role in 2008’s Mamma Mia!, based on the 1999 jukebox musical of the same name, Streep appeared only briefly in the sequel. The film moved back and forth between flashbacks of young Donna (Lily James) and present-day preparations for the reopening of the Hotel Bella Donna after Donna’s death.
Amanda Seyfried reprised her role as Donna’s daughter, Sophie Sheridan, and shared an onscreen moment with Streep at the end of the film when Donna’s ghost proudly watched her grandson’s christening. She also returned for the credits to sing more ABBA with Cher.
Streep isn’t the only Mamma Mia! star who is game to make another film.
“Listen, every single person in that movie would say yes in a heartbeat, because we want to hang out with each other,” Seyfried, 38, told Collider in June 2020. “That’s what we talked about last time, like, did we ever think that we’d end up here again on an island in Croatia?”
Christine Baranski, who played Donna’s former bandmate and wealthy divorcee, Tanya Chesham-Leigh, in both films, echoed the sentiment in January 2022.
“If we could go back and have the same amount of good fun and be on a Greek island together filming and dining together at night at some wonderful trattoria or taverna, I don’t think anybody would give you an argument,” she told Entertainment Weekly at the time.
While it’s still uncertain how Streep would be written into a third film after dying, James, 35, has an idea for how she could portray Donna again.
“I would love to do the next one,” James said during a January 2023 appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show. “I think it should be about how The Dynamos formed. Which is my idea but then maybe I could be in it. But it’s also a good idea.”
