Inside the lush locations of Julia Roberts and George Clooney's rom-com 'Ticket to Paradise' (2024)

Ol Parker swears he's not doing it on purpose.

The writer of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and writer-director of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and this fall's Ticket to Paradise never intended to make a string of films that feature incredible scenery and lush locations. It just sort of happened.

"It feels like coincidence," Parker, 53, tells EW. "There's a moment [in Ticket to Paradise] — a drone shot of the boat arriving on the beautiful beach, and George [Clooney] and Julia [Roberts] on the boat, and Kaitlyn [Dever] is waiting on the beach. The drone sweeps in, and it all looks majestic. And part of me was like, 'Oh, I've done this before.'"

Parker's latest feature stars Clooney and Roberts as a bickering divorced couple who must reunite to try to talk their daughter (Dever) out of a whirlwind marriage with a man she met on vacation in Bali. Much like Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, which subbed in Croatia for Greece, the production used Australia to double for Indonesia's Bali due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The writer-director admits that while Marigold Hotel and Mamma Mia! came his way with locations already in place, Ticket to Paradise involved a more deliberate choice, born out of the lockdown and isolation of the pandemic.

"This was more conscious," he says. "I started writing this with my friend, Daniel Pipski, at the beginning of the pandemic because I didn't know how to respond to the fact that the world had changed, possibly irrevocably. None of us knew what was going on or how long it would go on, or how drastic and awful it would be. And I knew that I wasn't going to write Contagion: The Movie or Pandemic: The Movie. I'm not that guy, and other people would do it much better than me."

"It was an amazing escape for Dan and I to write it," he continues. "Just in our heads, to be somewhere else — be somewhere happy and sunny and joyous and free. It came out of isolation and seclusion and misery and darkness. It was the idea of trying to make people as happy as possible and also take them to far-off sunny shores."

Parker says he chose Bali because it seemed like the furthest thing possible from the realities of the pandemic and English weather. He also confesses to hoping, if it got made, that he'd get to book some research trips. But filming in Bali wasn't possible, between COVID-19 regulations and his stars' schedules. Parker was determined from the earliest days to make this film with Clooney and Roberts — or not at all.

"When you start writing a movie, you assume it's not going to happen," he says. "But you never think George and Julia are actually going to say yes. That's just a ludicrous pipe dream. I thought I'd get to go to Bali a few times, and see some sites and make some friends, but it turned out to be Australia instead."

Still, having to adjust his locations so Australia could stand in for Bali didn't reduce Parker's attention to detail. "Few things are more satisfying to me than representing another culture successfully and with respect and humility," he says. "You listen a lot and take a lot of advice."

The Ticket to Paradise cast boasts a host of Balinese and Indonesian actors, who brought their own experiences and knowledge to the set. Many of them were first-time actors, populating the film's world with authentic faces.

Agung Pindha, who plays the groom's father, was originally meant to only be the cultural consultant on the project.

"We couldn't cast the part," recounts Parker. "We couldn't find the guy, and I'd met lots of people on Zoom and auditioned lots of people, and we couldn't find a lovely Balinese older actor. And I was talking to Agung, who lives in Queensland, but is fully Balinese. He was telling me about wedding rituals and wedding ceremonies and customs. While he was talking, I was just thinking, 'God, you're so handsome and charismatic and brilliant.' So at the end of the meeting, I was like, 'Would you mind coming out to my office for a second, and reading some lines?' He started reading, and halfway through the scene, I was like, 'Great, you got the part.' He was like, 'Which part? What's happening here?'"

That ethos and sense of collaboration permeated the entire project, making it as sunny off-screen as it is on. Still, Parker jokes that he should probably try something different for his next project.

"Maybe the next film should be in a room in the darkness, with people being cold and miserable," he quips. Parker's next project is set in Alaska, so maybe the cold part is accounted for. But don't expect anything less than breathtaking.

Ticket to Paradise hits theaters Oct. 21.

Related content:

• Julia Roberts says the Clooney family saved her from 'complete loneliness and despair' while filming Ticket to Paradise
• Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again: The story behind 'When I Kissed the Teacher'
• George Clooney and Julia Roberts are exes plotting against their daughter in Ticket to Paradise trailer