She wrote My Big Fat Greek Wedding and celebrated, with sweet humour, her ethnic heritage and all that culture clashes can entail. The film was a hit and Ms. Vardalos became a star.
The title came to mean something, like a bit of shorthand to describe something involving foreign customs that you've never witnessed because you're not Greek or redneck or what-have-you. So when Britain's Channel 4 needed a name for a new television programme, why not go with the tried and true?
The cameras follow Travellers in England, shedding some light into a very secretive culture that exists on the fringes of mainstream society. Few people know much about them, beyond the fact that they live on the side of the road in caravans and move about from place to place----hence the term "Traveller".
The children don't spend time in school because they're not in one town long enough for a term. The adult males work odd jobs, and have a reputation as criminals. To say they're not wanted is putting it mildly.
But still. The general public wants to know what goes on behind the walls of those mobile homes, and Channel 4 has done well with the series that presents the unique style of wedding in the Traveller community.
Big, over-the-top and outrageously expensive, viewers can't get enough of the preparations, the glitz and glamour in the midst of culturally-approved misogyny. There's a second season coming. Advertising for that second season has caused an uproar in the London Travellers Unit.
Channel 4 offers a series that is bigger, fatter and gypsier, playing on the title. The Traveller support group calls it racist, adding to the prejudice and discrimination that the Travellers face already.
So blame it on Nia Vardalos.
It was her clever title that set the ball rolling, started the whole big and fat and 'insert ethnicity here' business.
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