The first Devil Wears Prada was a bonafide hit after it released in 2006. Meryl Streep knew that it would be, which is why she doubled her salary ask when she was first offered the part of the now-iconic Miranda Priestly.
Now 20 years later, Streep revealed that bold (but worthy) negotiation move when speaking about Devil Wears Prada 2 with her sequel co-stars Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.
“I read the script [for the original], the script was great. They called me up and they made an offer, and I said, ‘No, not going to do it,’” Streep said during a Wednesday cast interview with Today. “I knew it was going to be a hit, and I wanted to see if I doubled my ask… And they went right away and said, ‘Sure.’ I thought, I’m 50-60 [years old] — it took me this long to understand that I could do that! They needed me, I felt. I was ready to retire. That was a lesson.”
The original movie earned more than $325 million globally at the box office, and praise poured in for the cast. Streep won a Golden Globe and was Oscar nominated for her role as the icy editor-in-chief of top fictional fashion magazine Runway (inspired by Vogue‘s editor-in-chiief Anna Wintour). Conversations behind the scenes about a sequel began as early as 2009.
“They started talking about a sequel, but we all waited until we had that good idea,” Streep said. “I think we all had to do it as well — you got to have all four of us come back,” added Blunt, who plays Emily Charlton, the first assistant to Miranda in the original. “There were mutterings and rumblings for years.”
“Lots of ideas,” Streep continues. “But it’s almost like the world had to shift in that way for Aline [Brosh McKenna] … to get a new idea that made sense. These people had to confront what’s going on in the world of journalism and publishing and politics. Everything has kind of flipped. And that’s cool, that that had a story embedded in it.”
So came the great idea that sparked Devil Wears Prada 2, which releases in theaters this weekend 20 years later. All four of the stars reprise their roles. But things have certainly changed. The hook of the sequel is that Hathaway’s character, Andrea “Andy” Sachs — the former second assistant to Miranda — returns to Runway amid a changing era for media and journalism.
“AI and technology has changed, not just the physical thing, but journalism itself, which is how obviously the movie starts,” says Tucci, who plays Nigel Kipling, Miranda’s right-hand editor.
“Everybody in their lives has had to surf the new reality and figure out how to survive, how to keep their scruples intact, how to keep their conscience awake and alive,” says Streep about reuniting with these characters in a time of great uncertainty for the industry. “[All the characters do] it in a different way and there are lots of compromises people make, and yet together, it’s kind of triumphant in the end.”
Hathaway says she was sold on the sequel once she read the screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna, who also wrote the 2006 original. McKenna in her script described the Andy of today by saying that “20 years has not done anything to dim her heart or smarts.”
“Aline McKenna cracked it, and she found a reason why we should make it beyond just nostalgia, beyond just giving people what they want,” Hathaway says. “She found something new and more to say with these characters, and so I felt like that actually took a lot of the pressure off. Then it was just back to what we do every time.”
In her conversations with McKenna and director David Frankel, Hathaway and the pair spoke about Andy being less wide-eyed in the sequel. But “she’s not become cynical, which is one of my favorite things about her. She really sees the best in situations, the best in people,” adds Hathaway.
She says that Andy stands by her choice to walk away from Runway at the end of the first film. “She knew it was the right choice for her. It hasn’t been easy. It hasn’t delivered some of the material success that maybe other people her age have. But she’s had a blast being herself, and now she’s looking for something else. I think she’s looking for some stability,” she adds.
When filming the sequel, Streep says she was able to spend more time with the cast this time around. She took a more method approach with the original, and kept her distance so as to keep up the right amount of mystery (and fear) around Miranda. This time, however, “we come in (and) Miranda is more discombobulated,” Streep says.
Blunt, meanwhile, says her Emily has not softened with time, and delights in playing someone “who is in a constant state of outrage.
“There will be some sort of undoing that has to happen for all of them. But I adore playing her. I think that she’s a complete lunatic, clearly. But I find her sort of delicious and fun. I think it’s like now, she’s sort of even more insane because she has power,” she adds of Emily, who is now an executive at fashion house Dior.
Streep, however, still remains wide-eyed at the love for the franchise.
“Everybody has their origin story (of) when they saw it,” she says of the first movie. “It’s very gratifying, but it’s also kind of mystifying.”
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