Few movies can both generate a meme and put a color on the map — but “The Devil Wears Prada” managed it, and in the same scene. (Cerulean knitwear was never the same.) A blockbuster in 2006, the movie has only grown more beloved, and more quotable, since.
Two decades after Meryl Streep, as the unsparing fashion editor Miranda Priestly, made a meal of the phrase “That’s all,” comes the sequel, with the same director, David Frankel, and stars: Anne Hathaway as Andy, the idealistic former assistant with serious journalism chops who’s back at Miranda’s magazine, Runway; Emily Blunt as the barbed former underling Emily, now a design executive; and Stanley Tucci as Miranda’s loyal right-hand man, Nigel.
The characters endured, but they are all roiled by today’s economics, with tech overlords, corporate consolidations and a crumbling media landscape. Hathaway said, “Things that used to feel so safe now feel so unstable” — onscreen and off. “That was the heart string that just kept coming up for me.”
For the cast, reuniting was a rare pleasure. “Their whole professional lives blossomed in the interim,” Streep said admiringly of Hathaway and Blunt. “And Stanley and I are close friends now. All that time, can’t get rid of him.” (And Blunt and Tucci are family: In 2012, he married her older sister.)
Stuffed with cameos and comic scene-stealers, “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” in theaters on May 1, is hotly anticipated. In a recent round-table interview and separate conversations at the Four Seasons New York Downtown, the director and cast reflected on filming 20 years apart, being ambitious, and whether Streep is mean in real life. There was a lot of laughter.
These are edited excerpts from the conversations.
How do you think of the original movie now?
STREEP Quaint. You know, it was made a year before the iPhone came out. It’s another world, entirely.
BLUNT It’s just been so moving that it had this meteoric life that none of us saw when we were making it. We thought we were hilarious. But we didn’t think anyone else would.
TUCCI A lot of movies date pretty quickly. That movie works all the time. You have generations of people watching it.
FRANKEL Before the studio saw it, I called Meryl and said, please come to the cutting room. She was really my partner in making it. She hopped on the 1 train from TriBeCa to Times Square, and came in and said, it’s great. She knew right off the bat. That gave me so much confidence.
BLUNT This is the only film my children have liked that I’ve done. I’ve made children’s movies for them, which they’ve seen once.
My girls watched it again last night. They thought I was the meanest person on earth. And they see themselves in Annie. They’re like, I’m her.
But the new movie has a very different feeling than the original.
STREEP The first one was a Cinderella story, and this one is more like “Pilgrim’s Progress” with better clothes. This young woman going through the Stations of the Cross, every crisis of conscience and betrayal. [To Hathaway] You have a lot of big decisions. So this is more complicated.
HATHAWAY Andy has lived a life that has given her a lot of satisfaction. She did what she wanted to do, she’s had a lot of adventures. The thing that she doesn’t have, and she’s having a hard time finding, is something that a lot people in the world are having a difficult time finding, which is job security. And so the thing that just kept coming up for me on this movie was how much she wanted a home.
She does at least have better fashion sense. The clothes are even more central, in a way.
TUCCI The fittings were as enjoyable as making the movie. It was such a collaborative effort [with the costume designer Molly Rogers].
STREEP Stanley’s [currently] wearing a suit he designed.
TUCCI I love fashion.
HATHAWAY To be the costume designer of a “Devil Wears Prada” movie is a heroic act, because it’s not just one character arc, it’s so, so many. Fashion is a language in the film; it’s another character.
STREEP It’s like the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park.” It’s that important!
Meryl, what did you like about Miranda Priestly originally?
STREEP I liked the ability to — in drama school, they would say to us, do you know how to convey that you’re the king or queen? And everybody would say, well, you project power. And it helps to have lifts in your shoes, things like that. And the teacher said, no, no, the way you convey power is how everyone else in the room behaves when you enter it. You just act naturally, but the molecules around you change. So that was the direction, that everybody was afraid of me. I didn’t have to raise my voice or do anything.
BLUNT Your decision to play her that way was such an amazing way to go — to not come in swinging it around. I mean your enormous penis. [Laughter]
STREEP Most of the bosses that I’d had in my life were men. So I copied them, the people that were good at leading in a strong way without making a big effort, seemingly.
For a lot of you, the movie changed your life.
FRANKEL It was my first big studio movie, and my only wish was, please God let me work again.
STREEP I always feel that.
HATHAWAY Andy and I are the same age, and in the first film we definitely shared a feeling of being in over our heads. This was the biggest thing that I’d ever been a part of, and I was — [to Streep] you’ve heard me say this and I don’t want to embarrass you, but I was acting opposite —
STREEP Don’t say that.
HATHAWAY OK, I won’t go there. I was acting opposite somebody from New Jersey, and I was really excited about it. [Clasping hands with Streep] We’re Jersey girls.
Emily, it was your breakout role.
BLUNT [The character] Emily is based on a few rather acerbic, anguished people that I know. She’s a weird combination, and then cartoonized, of various British people. She’s desperate and starving. But it’s very fun to play someone who is perpetually outraged by everything.
I felt like everyone went to read for that part. I was actually reading for a dragon movie that I deeply wanted. Thank God they said, hey, while you’re here, we’re making “The Devil Wears Prada,” do you want to read for it? And I remember being very late for my flight, so I read it in a blind panic, then David called me and said, can you come and do that again? But the studio want to see you wearing something more stylish than the strange warrior queen costume I had tried to cobble on.
FRANKEL We had to pray that she didn’t get the dragon movie. And on the day she didn’t, I called her, and her mother said, oh, she’s gone down to the pub to drown her sorrows over not getting the dragon movie. I told her, “You have the part,” but she didn’t believe me.
BLUNT [Laughing] I was clearly drunk.
How did it feel to step into the characters two decades later?
TUCCI I was a bit nervous. I thought, how am I going to do this again? And then it just happened. You know, [Nigel’s] aged.
BLUNT There’s a little world-weariness that’s very touching about him. He doesn’t sweat the small stuff.
TUCCI He knows that the whole thing can only last for so long — but you only know that when you’re my age.
STREEP I was so nervous. I was not on any social media, so I didn’t know that there was this appetite for the film. And when we got out on the street [for filming], it was insane [with fan attention]. It threw me in the beginning, it really did screw me up. But then once we got nice and safe in the studio, I was fine.
What lessons do these movies have about ambition?
HATHAWAY I don’t know that the film says anything; it just shows. You’re seeing ambitious women in action, and I like that.
BLUNT Ambition has often been deemed a negative word for women. For men, it is seen as something to be celebrated. And I think ambition really only means dreams with great purpose. The first [movie] offered this very inspiring space for girls to look up to that, to want more for yourself.
STREEP You know, if Miranda Priestly were Michael Priestly, there would be no movie, the first movie. Everything she does is sort of slightly horrible, but would be kind of adorable if a man said, “By all means, move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills me.” And everybody would go, “He’s great, isn’t he?” But there’s a special tinge of mercury around that kind of remark from a woman. [Fake crying] It just hurts more.
Watching these movies made me think of a great Tina Fey line: “Bitches get stuff done.” Do you think you can be a mean person and a good boss?
STREEP I am a mean person. I don’t have to think, could I do that?
BLUNT [laughing] Do you mean in life, or in the movie?
STREEP In life.
BLUNT Mean as a snake!
TUCCI She’s not mean.
Have you ever wanted to pull a Miranda in your real life?
HATHAWAY The way Miranda doesn’t apologize and goes at the pace that she wants to, and it’s for everyone else to keep up, and anticipate what she’s going to want next — sometimes I would like to drop into that gear. But in real life, you kind of have to go with the pace of the group.
STREEP I would like to lower my voice and have people pay attention, but it doesn’t work.
BLUNT It doesn’t!
There are very different stakes in making this movie. You have a legacy. You have a bigger budget.
FRANKEL The first movie was disastrous every day. I kept a journal. And on this movie, on Day 4, I said, let me just see what Day 4 was like 20 years ago. And it says: Thursday, it’s hard to imagine a day could go worse than this.
HATHAWAY That wasn’t the vibe on set.
BLUNT You did not break a sweat! My favorite is hearing David laugh behind the monitor. You’re a very discreet laugher, but when you really guffaw, it’s a dream.
FRANKEL [The sequel’s budget] mostly went to them [the cast]. So the making of the movie was kind of similar. We were always scrapping, and it was never enough. But that’s normal, every movie.
STREEP That’s not true. The movies that are about women, there’s a much bigger [budget] fight than there is for Chris Nolan or something. I love him and I’d love to work with him, but —
FRANKEL Meryl’s right. There’s an expectation that movies about women have a limited box office, and so based on that the studios say, OK, here’s how much you get. And there are other movies where it’s presumed unlimited box office, and so the budget is unlimited. And we did go through that again, even on the scale of this movie. We’ll find out who is right.
Meryl, you have a speech in the movie about the costs of a career like Miranda’s — but you also say, emphatically, how much you love working. In my screening, that line made people cry. Thanks for that.
STREEP [Grabbing my face for emphasis and smiling, it must be said, a little devilishly] That was an ad lib. You’re welcome.
Melena Ryzik is a roving culture reporter at The Times, covering the personalities, projects and ideas that drive the creative world.
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