Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper on the set of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

To be able to meet the icon that is Cher is perplexing to most. To be able to work with her on the set of a film is incomprehensible. So when Dominic Cooper – star of Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again – was busy counting his lucky stars as he geared up for his first scene with the music legend, he was taken aback by her instant, almost wariness, of him. On set with Amanda Seyfreid, his real life ex-girlfriend, Cooper says Cher “took one look at me and didn’t trust me at all.”

“She told me so herself, which I laughed out loud at,” Cooper recounts to Vanity Fair. “Amanda made it clear that we used to, once upon a time, be together, Cher said [to Seyfried], ‘You dodged a bullet there.’ She said it as a joke, but she thinks she knows me very well, the type of person I am.”

Cher and Amanda Seyfried attend the UK Premiere of “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” in London this week.

Harsh. But it was Cooper candid anecdotes about Cher that make her even more interesting. Note, the one about dating the same guy as another girl.

“She’s so funny. She’s a really wonderful person to be around,” said Cooper. “I sat with her and her friend at dinner the other night, and we sort of joked about their path and how they met, these two best friends – [they were] both dating the same man at the same time or something, and then got rid of him and then had a good relationship for the last 40 years, which is much more important…She was kind of just mesmerizing actually; there’s a reason she’s that popular. There’s a reason why everyone stands up and screams when she comes on-screen, because she’s someone who’s so good at doing that. She’s at her best when she’s performing. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen on a film set. When the lights went out in the studio and the spotlight came upon her and she started singing Super Trouper, it was just absolutely magical. We all watched in awe.”

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is in Australian cinemas now.