The Devil Wears Prada 2 doesn’t just reunite its four major stars in front of the camera with Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci all present and correct, but it also welcomes back director David Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna.
In the intervening 20 years, a lot has happened. The cast has accrued eleven Oscar nominations between them (including a win each for Streep and Hathaway) and Frankel has been busy with films like Marley & Me and Hope Springs.
And that’s before we mention the entire media landscape that was previously Miranda Priestly’s playground has all-but collapsed, weathering trying times of transformation since.
For Frankel and McKenna, there was no rushing back for the sake of it after success of the first movie in 2006 – especially because Frankel still didn’t know how they achieved it the first time.
‘So many things have to go right, so much luck has to happen. You look back and it’s like somebody making a hole in one,’ he tells Metro the night after the new film’s blockbuster red carpet premiere in Leicester Square, which stretched across two separate cinemas.
‘It’s one of the reasons we resisted the idea of making a sequel ever because how could lightning strike again? This time you know what the goal is and you’re trying to manufacture that lightning and that’s a whole different kind of pressure.’
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When making 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada, Frankel, 67, candidly recalls that it was greenlit with a budget of $35 million – and then he was told that it was not enough to film in the French capital, where 20 minutes of the film is set, ‘and don’t even mention the word ‘Paris’ when you’re on this lot’.
‘I freaked out and ran to the executives and they said, “Don’t worry, you’ll figure something out.”’
After seven weeks shooting in New York City, Frankel was finally allowed to scout the French capital – but on the proviso he only got two days there.
‘I’ve never heard of, before or since, a situation where you start a movie and you have no idea how you’re planning to shoot an entire sequence of it. And then they said you can’t bring Meryl to Paris! And we had to manufacture a way to make it look like Miranda was there.’
The sequel sets its climactic scenes in Milan, with Frankel happy to confirm that, this time, ‘logic prevailed’ and everybody made it to Italy. The new big challenge was getting Lady Gaga to fulfil the screenplay’s directive that ‘a pop star performs’. But their dream came true when the studio’s approach this time was – let us help you make that happen.
Perhaps unsurprising when the first film grossed over $326 million…
But Frankel had ‘never imagined’ they would do a sequel.
‘There was immediate talk of course when the movie was successful initially. We love the characters, we love the actors, why wouldn’t you want to see them? But we honestly did not have the imagination to figure out how they might get back, not just get back together – I mean, obviously, they could run into each other – but to put them into an orbit where the dynamics were similar seemed impossible and also very repetitive like, oh God, we’re just gonna watch Miranda be mean to Andy again. What is she going to learn?’
Frankel is proud of the bigger, universal questions The Devil Wears Prada asks about where you draw the line, what’s important and figuring out your life – alongside its office comedy setting. A sequel had to ask ‘similarly substantive questions’.
‘And maybe it did take 20 years to find questions that resonate as powerfully as the things we’re questioning in the first movie.’
This time, it’s examining the role of journalists, the function of the media and the identity of fashion in 2026.
‘Then we’re exploring the question of Miranda’s legacy – when do you call it quits when you’re a powerful person in your 70s, and should you ever stop? These are really interesting questions to me, especially as I get older,’ adds Frankel.
Part of Miranda’s legacy that the sequel has fun tackling is her problematic behaviour in the office.
‘She’s obviously had a few chats with the powers that be and she’s wisely hired Amari [Simone Ashley], an assistant who’s there as a kind of ombudswoman, to protect her from her worst self,’ he smiles.
Frankel also points to Andy’s assistant, Jin Chao (played by Helen J. Shen), who ‘represents a new generation of young people who didn’t grow up in a culture where really hard work has been rewarded, [and] where there’s an expectation of work-life balance’.
He sees Andy throwing her phone in the fountain first time around as ‘a precursor to that view among younger people’, which they wanted to comment on.
Other characters fall foul of today’s new standards too.
‘Everybody needs a little bit of correction and that’s the world we live in.’
Speaking of correction, The Devil Wears Prada 2 presents Andy with a very different type of love interest to Adrian Grenier’s oft-considered toxic Nate from the first film, who many fans have cast as the villain. Enter Peter (Patrick Brammall), an endearing property developer who was impacted ‘a lot’ by the Nate backlash – which Frankel never anticipated.
‘In fact, I thought Nate grew a lot in perspective by the end of the first movie. It’s ambiguous how their relationship ends, but I always imagined they made an effort to stay together even though they were working in different cities,’ he puts forward, and I can practically hear the hisses from some fan quarters.
‘That whole backlash against Nate shocked me,’ he admits. ‘It was really important to Aline to have a love interest in this movie who was supportive and not in the media business but was completely respectful. So Peter went out of his way to read Andy’s articles, really appreciates her and is encouraging at every step.’
This is in contrast to Nate, Frankel does agree, ‘who seemed less supportive when he had opportunities to be better’.
‘[But] he was a young man and we all have our own tunnel focus.’
Frankel also touches on the tumult of making the first film, which he says was – despite its eventual triumph – ‘very hard’.
‘Meryl wasn’t happy all the time because she kept her distance from the younger actors, and so it wasn’t such a happy experience for her socially. And then Annie was going through some personal stuff, Emily was going through some personal stuff, we were struggling to make the movie, the hours were crazily long.
‘We failed miserably in many, many ways – it was just a really hard shoot,’ he shares – but luckily the sequel was ‘the opposite’.
‘This was joyful every minute honestly, I don’t want to gloat about it, but it was four amazing movie stars working at the peak of their game and connecting with chemistry that was 20 years old and therefore ripened in a fantastic way.’
There is also plenty, thankfully, to keep fan-favourites Blunt’s Emily and Tucci’s Nigel occupied as Andy re-enters Miranda’s orbit and finds the former a high-powered exec at Dior and the latter right where she left him – as Runway’s creative director.
One of the best scenes we have Blunt to thank for, where we see the core four sizing each other up again at the Dior office. However, Nigel wasn’t supposed to be there.
‘Emily said, “Here you have a chance to get the Beatles back together, all four of us for one scene early in the movie, and you’re missing a good bet!” And Aline went, “Oh my God, you’re totally right!” and we fixed it. That’s the only shame, how hard it was to even engineer one scene where they’re all together.’
The main attraction, though, is Streep’s Miranda Priestly, that coolly devastating editorial menace towards Hathaway’s Andy.
In 2007, Streep managed a rare Academy Award nomination for a comedy role. Here she is perhaps even better, imbuing her part with an incredible amount of nuance thanks to a single glance, hesitation or withering new line. Surely she’ll be in line for a second nod for portraying the character? It would make her only the seventh actor to achieve that feat, if so.
‘Of course there’s a chance, she’s the most nominated actor in the history so if you were gonna bet on anyone, you’d bet on Meryl Streep to get an Oscar nomination,’ Frankel agrees – but he sounds a note of caution.
‘It’s rare that the Academy pays attention to comedies, and it’s a movie that’s coming out early in the year and it’s easy to forget at the end. But I do think it’s a really memorable performance and I hope that she gets recognised for it.’
With opening day imminent for The Devil Wears Prada 2, Frankel admits he’s grappling with ‘crushing expectations’ and ‘many, many sleepless nights’ as he waits to see how it will be received.
‘In the movies, ‘nobody knows anything’ is an important mantra. You can have a great script and actors and somehow the chemistry still has to boil up in a way that this magic happens.’
The first film had a magical connection he’s witnessed with women and men alike thanks to its crossover appeal.
‘My daughter has friends who it’s their father’s favourite movie! That’s both puzzling to me and thrilling. I hope that this movie connects with people half as much.’
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is in cinemas on Friday, May 1.
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