The Dark Knight, with its brooding mystery, is dominating headlines this weekend, but Mamma Mia! has some troubling questions of its own, questions like, "Are the Greek islands really always that beautiful or do they just reflect Amanda Seyfried?" "Will these songs ever get out of my head?" and, perhaps most of all, "Did Meryl Streep really sign up for this willingly?" Best to let her explain.

Q: So how much fun was it for you to be part of this Mamma Mia! craziness?

A: Well I’d like to call it work so I could justify my salary, but it was really just pure fun.  It was challenging. It wasn’t without its physical and emotional challenges, but it was always, always, just  a joyful experience. 

Part of that comes from [director] Phyllida [Lloyd] because...she created an atmosphere where everybody was happy and did their best work and we thought we were kind of in charge.  The best directors make the actors feel like it’s just their playground, and that’s the way we felt, we felt complete freedom. But it was fun to get to sing and dance, and sing ABBA songs.

Q: What is it about Abba’s music that just is infectious?

A: I was talking with Benny Anderson [a founding member of ABBA and a producer on the film], and I said, "What is it, what is a hook?  What is it that goes into people’s brains?" Because there are lots of songs that are number one hits that nobody remembers after two years, and there are other ones that after 30 years just the first strains of them come on and you’re there and they have a talent to create that kind of melody that just lodges somewhere inside your being and it becomes like an appendage.  You know you have it, you have it for life.

Q: And [Mamma Mia!] appeals to really many generations.  Talk about [how] mothers and daughters and families can really get into watching this together.

A: Well there are multiple storylines. So there is a young story of young love and how people in their eagerness to be together push each other to some sort of ideal or what they picture, and that’s one story. And then there’s another story of old friends getting together.  Then there is a mother-daughter story, and what it’s like to prepare a wedding for your only child, and then there is a love story about lost love and regained. 

There are a lot of different things in it, but the only thing that matters, as my son said to me, is, "Mom, stay on the beat, just stay on the beat."