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    18 Things You Probably Didn't Know About "Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again"

    There was a competition between male cast members to see how much they could stuff down their spandex trousers.

    1. Lily James almost didn't go for the role of Young Donna – her agents were hesitant to pitch her the part, and her audition fell on the same weekend as Glastonbury Festival.

    2. And to prepare for the role, she made and repeatedly listened to an audio track of all of Meryl Streep's lines and songs from the original movie.

    3. Filming started almost immediately after Lily completed the press tour for Baby Driver, and she had talked so much that her doctor told her she wasn't allowed to speak for a week to prepare for her role in the musical.

    4. Amanda Seyfried found out the sequel was happening only two days after giving birth to her daughter. When her agent told her the news, she thought it was a joke.

    5. Cher was never asked if she would take the role of Sophie's grandmother – she was told. The head of Universal Pictures, who used to be her agent, called her, told her she had to take the part, and hung up before she could refuse.

    6. She said it was difficult to learn "Fernando" because the lyrics weren't originally written in English and therefore "things are turned upside down".

    7. When coming up with the story, Richard Curtis and Ol Parker stayed in a caravan for three days, pinned the names of their favourite ABBA songs to a wall, and tried to make the songs fit in with the narrative.

    8. So Andy Garcia's character was created after the script was written, purely for one joke – so Cher could spot him from the balcony and shout, "Fernando!"

    9. Julie Walters had to take a day off from filming to go to Buckingham Palace when she was made a Dame. The day she got back the entire cast and crew surprised her with a rendition of "There's Nothing Like A Dame".

    10. Hugh Skinner, Jeremy Irvine, and Josh Dylan, who play Harry, Sam, and Bill's younger counterparts, all lived together in a villa in Croatia for the six weeks they were filming.

    11. The first time Lily James met Meryl Streep was after she watched Meryl film a very emotional scene of the film, and Lily had been "crying and snotting".

    12. While filming "Knowing Me, Knowing You", Lily James had to cry and hug a horse – but the horse wasn't having any of it.

    13. When they were filming the movie's credits scene, director Ol Parker simply blasted "Super Trouper" and let the cast have fun. What you see in the film is just "cherry-picked bits of it".

    14. And, during that scene, the male cast members competed to see who could stuff the most down their spandex trousers.

    15. There's a bonus song on the soundtrack – "The Day Before You Came" – that was never actually in the film, but it was recorded because it's Richard Curtis' favourite ABBA song and Meryl Streep wanted to sing it.

    16. Lily James broke her toe on set by running into a lighting stand, so she had a broken toe while filming the "Waterloo" scene.

    17. In the first Mamma Mia film, there's a Greek woman who has a small role in "Dancing Queen". The same woman has a tiny cameo in the sequel during the same song.

    18. And finally, the cast and director Ol Parker wouldn't be opposed to doing a third movie.