Friendship changes over time. We all know that, but the four girls from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants push this idea to the top of their game on the sequel that arrives today at the movie theatres. Collider talked with Amber Tamblyn (Tibby), America Ferrera (Carmen), Blake Lively (Bridget) and Alexis Blendel (Lena) at a press conference in New York City. Giggling, the four musketeers were happy to get together (“this doesn’t happen often, we are almost never in the same city all together”, complains Amber, who is buying her first house in Los Angeles, while America and Bridget work in NYC on their hyped shows Ugly Betty  and Gossip Girl and Alexis, the younger of the Gilmore Girls, is filming a comedy with Andrew McCarthy) and couldn’t stop making fun of each other. Part of the movie was shot in Santorini, the beautiful Greek island, where they rode a donkey, jumped from cliffs and had a non-serious moped accident. “Well, ok, this was my fault, even though Blake was right behind me! Blake hurt her knee pretty bad and America fell off. It was very dramatic and it was our first day of shooting in Greece!”, says Amber.

 In The Sisterhood of Travelling Pants II Tibby is studying film in NYU while dealing with the new steps of her relationship with Brian (Leonardo Nam). Lena is trying to forget her beloved Kostos (Michael Rady) dedicating herself to art classes in Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and a new fling. Bridget is trying to learn more about her roots and travels all over the world to return home completely transformed. And Carmen, feeling abandoned by her pals, finds refugee and something else in a summer theatre event in Vermont.

“What I think it is interesting is that Carmen is very different now. She was a lot more extroverted. She is forced to be on her own, without her friends. The issues that she was dealing with in the first movie are intensified here. The abandonment of her father, who was moving on, starting a new family, now translates to her mother’s new family and her friends having their own lives, moving on as well. And she is growing older, doing it on her own. I really like this”, says America.

For the follow-up to the 2005 movie based on Ann Brashares’ best-selling novels, Elizabeth Chandler is again adapting the story to the big screen. “But this time was more complicated since she is condensing information from the second and third books and we didn’t really know what the director Sanaa Hamri would use in the end”, explains Alexis. “Still, we all know here that in the television shows you learn about your characters every single week. In the movies is easier to plan because on TV the writers are not even allowed to tell you some details about your character. Think about Serena and her dark secrets from Gossip Girl. I never ever know what’s gonna happen with her. She is changing all the time!”, says Blake.

The producers are hoping that the push for female movies such as Sex & the City (that has made US$ 151 million since its release) and the new star-power of both America and Blake help the odds of the second Travelling. The original one made a bit less than US$ 39 million at the box-office and the shy result was the main reason for the three-year interval between the two movies. It is time to see if the public agrees with the cast that maybe ‘it was never really about the pants’.