Meryl Streep has revealed that she nearly turned down The Devil Wears Prada and said she “doubled” her salary ask before agreeing to do one of the most defining roles of her career a decade ago.
Streep said she “knew it was going to be a hit” as soon as she read the script. “I thought, it’s a great script. And they called me up and made an offer and I said, ‘No, I’m not gonna do it,’” she told host Jenna Bush Hager, who has a cameo in the film, on the Today show.
“I knew it was gonna be a hit, and I wanted to see if I doubled my ask, and they went right away and said, ‘Sure’.”
The Devil Wears Prada, based on Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel of the same name, was released in 2006 to both commercial and critical success, raking in $326.7m worldwide and winning Streep a Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy. Directed by David Frankel, the film followed Andrea ‘Andy’ Sachs (Hathaway), as she lands a job working for Miranda Priestly (Streep), the ice-cold editor of a major New York fashion magazine.
The character of Priestly is considered to have been at least partially inspired by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who Weisberger worked for as a personal assistant.
Streep, who was 56 at the time she was offered the film, said that it had taken her that much time in her five-decade long career to “understand that I could do that, that you can ask for what you want”.
“I was sure it would be a hit, and they needed me. I wanted it, but if they didn’t want to do that, I was ok because I’m old. I was ready to retire, but that was a lesson. That was a great way to start, so I was in a good mood when we began.”
Two decades after the original film’s release, the original main cast are all reprising their roles for the forthcoming sequel. The Devil Wears Prada 2 sees Miranda clash with her former assistant-turned-rival executive Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt) over limited advertising dollars in the declining world of print journalism. Hathaway reprises her role as Andy, while Stanley Tucci returns as Miranda’s right-hand man, Nigel Kipling.
Tucci agreed that The Devil Wears Prada has become a “classic film”. “It endures, and people seem to have not been able to get enough of us. So here we are,” he said.
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On the sequel, Streep added that conversation about a sequel started in 2009, but “we all waited until we had that good idea”.
“Lots of ideas. But it’s almost like the world had to shift in that way for Aline [Brosh McKenna], who wrote the original, 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.”
Newcomers to the franchise include Kenneth Branagh, Lucy Liu, and Bridgerton star Simone Ashley. In October, Lady Gaga was spotted on the set of the film, though it is unclear who she will be playing.
In her review, The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey gave the film four stars and described it as “what might be the most trenchant, committed portrait made about the state of contemporary journalism”. Early social media reactions from press viewings have also praised the film, with several film critics applauding its “delightful” cast and the timeliness of its “exploration of modern media.”
The Devil Wears Prada 2 hits theatres worldwide on 1 May.
