Everyones summer zaddy crush—recently seen stealing hearts in Book Club—is back. In Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Andy Garcías studly Fernando quietly steals almost every scene hes in—whether hes portentously warning of a coming storm, or watching his true love, Cher, croon one of ABBAs greatest hits. Its a command performance, and one that snuck into the movie at the last minute; according to writer-director Ol Parker, he only thought of adding Fernando to the mix once most of the film had already been plotted out.
Parker and his co-screenwriter/executive producer Richard Curtis spent three days in a caravan in a field, away from modern distractions like Wi-Fi, as they worked through the beats of the sequel to 2008s hit ABBA musical movie. The two had figured out how to weave nearly all of their favorite tunes by the band into the film—except “Fernando.” Then, Parker had an idea.
“I was like, Theres a guy, O.K.? He works for the hotel; hes the hotel manager. Hes Hispanic. And hes very sad—hes a lugubrious character. Hes a poet . . . We need to drop in that he had his heart broken many years ago.” For 10 minutes, he rambled, until arriving at the big reveal: Ruby (the character who would be played by Cher) and Fernando were once lovers.
“Richard just fell on the floor laughing—the most I think Ive ever seen him laugh,” Parker said. When he saw that, he knew he had a winning idea.
Later, Parker and the Mamma Mia! team presented Cher with a list of options to play her on-screen beau. García was her first choice, and in the film, one can see why: as played by the actor, Fernando Cienfuegos brims with old-world elegance. The hotel manager is always dressed in about 12 layers of linen; he comes prepared with a stylish hat when the sun is beating down on the island, and his beard is meticulously maintained. (The facial hair, by the way, was Garcías idea.) Before his reunion with Ruby, Fernando always seems mournful, working to ensure everyones happiness but his own—because, as he tells Amanda Seyfrieds Sophie, the ship of happiness sailed away a long time ago for him, never to return.
Its that backstory—bolstered by Garcías commitment—that makes Rubys climactic serenade to Fernando so satisfying. As Parker noted, the film takes ABBAs lyrics seriously and runs with them, consistently walking a tightrope between sincerity and over-the-top humor. “Fernando” is a perfect example: the man himself has tears in his eyes, as he calls out the year he and Ruby met: “Mexico, 1959!”
“Hes going for it,” Parker said of García. “And Cher, obviously, can never do anything other than go for it. Shes all in . . . Its obviously a preposterous joke at the time, but it becomes a better joke if you take it phenomenally seriously.”
One of the most amusing—or lightly vexing—things about García and Chers characters is how time must bend to accommodate them. Cher, as many have pointed out, is far too young to play Meryl Streeps mother—and García is even younger than she is. (He would have been a mere three years old in the year their characters purportedly met.) But García answers questions about his characters advanced age with a challenge of his own: “How old is Fernando in the movie? Nobody knows how old I am in the movie. Im surely [meant] to be older than my age, but I mean . . . its all Mamma Mia! time.” García also proposed that Chers character may be older than Fernando—and, more tantalizingly, that Fernando could be the father of Donna, played in the film by both Streep and Lily James.
García compares Fernando to royalty; he dresses, the actor said, like a czar. While shooting the film, he made a habit of carrying around pocketknives, pens, pencils, and notepads—things García thought his character would carry around for his job. “You might use them, or you might not,” he said, “but they are there if, in the spur of the moment, you dont want to have to say, Cut! Can I get my pocketknife? I have an idea. Its got to be on you. Youve got to reach for it, and cut the apple or whatever youre doing. . . I dont really predesign whats going to happen—but I prepare the character, and then I live freely within any circumstance that Im in.”
The very moment Fernando Cienfuegos shows up on-screen, Christine Baranski and Julie Walterss characters, Tanya and Rosie, are smitten—and as soon as Tanya notes that Fernandos last name translates to “a hundred fires,” the two begin to bicker over who gets more of the fires than the other. That, García said, was his own humble contribution to the script. The first line Tanya utters upon seeing him, however, is the best of all: “Be still my beating vagina.”
That line, Parker said, only entered the script once he knew they had cast García. “I think I wrote the line after—because hes that hot.“
“The script was so beautifully written,” García said, noting that his suggested additions were minimal. “I mean, Ol and Richard Curtis are about as great as scene writers [as] you can find in the genre, you know . . . It was so precise and beautifully done. Your interpretation of the lines is different—that comes from the actor—but it was all there.”
Cher, like Garcías friend and Book Club co-star Diane Keaton, were both on the actors bucket list of collaborators—so this summer has been quite fruitful. But as one might expect, the two didnt have copious amounts of time to bond; they met one or two days before they started filming, rehearsed one afternoon, practiced their dance, and then shot. “I dont even remember the things we talked about, to tell you the truth,” García said of their first meeting. “Just listen to the songs . . . the story is there. And we just tried to empower the space of that, and make it live truthfully within the imaginary circumstances of this movie.”
García speaks seriously about his craft, but make no mistake—he also had a ball on set. On the actors first day, Parker remembers him playing a little prank on the production team: “He went up to the choreographer, and he said that hed decided to play [Fernando] with a very big limp,” Parker said. For a moment, the choreographer thought they had a disaster on their hands. “And then Andy went, Im kidding, Im kidding,” Parker said. “Hes a lovely guy.” During the end-credits sequence, the initial plan was for Fernando to simply melt away after he helps Ruby onstage and gives her a kiss. García, however, wanted to dance—and so, if you look over Chers left shoulder, youll see him getting his groove on alongside the extras.
But perhaps the best Fernando moment is one that only Spanish speakers are likely to catch: as Fernando and Ruby emerge for the first time after their reunion, everyone notes that Fernando is all smiles. As Fernando puts it, shes turned his frown upside down. Rubys response? With a coy grin, she says—in Spanish—that its not the only thing shes lifted. “Así es,” Fernando says—meaning, “Precisely.”
García couldnt recall the origin of the line: “It might have been written in English, or Cher might have just wanted to say it as a frisky thing,” he said. “Those that speak Spanish will get a kick out of it.”
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Laura BradleyLaura Bradley is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.
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