'The Devil Wears Prada' SAG Awards Reunion Is a Reminder of How Hard It Was To Get the Movie Made
It’s been 18 years since The Devil Wears Prada dazzled fashionistas on the big screen, and the 2024 reunion at the SAG Awards on Saturday proved that Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Anne Hathaway created a cult classic. Nobody but Streep could have pulled off the icy Runway editor Miranda Priestly… well, maybe Vogue editor Anna Wintour whom the character was loosely based on… but you get the idea.
What is hard to fathom now is that this 2006 box-office hit movie struggled to get made because Streep’s character was originally playing out a “revenge story,” according to director David Frankel in EW‘s oral history for the film’s 15th anniversary. He had to convince Fox 2000 studio that “Miranda is the heroine, not the villain, of the piece and that this was a coming-of-age story for Andy learning what it took to be great at something.”
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The executives also were not interested in the then-lesser-known actress, Anne Hathaway, to play Andy. They had a list with A-list names like Rachel McAdams, Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, Kate Hudson, and Kirsten Dunst ahead of her. Hathaway has even joked that she was the “ninth choice” for the role. After McAdams turned down the role “three times,” Hathaway took it upon herself to vigorously campaign for the role. (And it didn’t hurt that the buzzy Brokeback Mountain was just about to be released.)
“I patiently waited until it was my turn, and I got the call. It was the easiest yes in the world. I remember the moment I found out I got the part, I just ran screaming through my apartment,” Hathaway told EW. “I had a bunch of friends over at the time, I just jumped up in the living room and screamed, ‘I’m going to be in The Devil Wears Prada!'”
The other big issue was Wintour herself, designers, models, and anyone related to the fashion industry feared that there would be retribution for cooperating with the Hollywood project. “The Met Ball meant that the Metropolitan Museum wanted nothing to do with us; because of Fashion Week, Bryant Park [didn’t either],” Frankel revealed. “Even these iconic apartment buildings we saw as possibilities for Miranda’s apartment, the co-op boards wouldn’t let us in. We went for weeks being unable to secure locations!” Wintour had that much power over the industry!
The queen of Vogue had nothing to worry about with Streep giving Miranda a warm heart — one that was buried deep, but it was there. The Devil Wears Prada only added more mystique to Wintour’s legacy. Yet there was one thing she did not love, and it was the spot-on replication of her office in the film. In true form, she pulled a pure diva move after the film came out. “The only contact we had with Vogue was Jess Gonchor, the production designer, who snuck into their offices to get a look at Anna’s office,” Frankel shared. “He was able to re-create the office so authentically that I was told Anna redecorated hers immediately after the movie came out.”
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