While filming Devil Wears Prada 2 in Milan during Fashion Week last October, Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep attended runway shows together as part of production. What Streep observed in the front row stayed with her, and what Hathaway did about it became a story worth telling.
Streep recounted the moment in a Harper’s Bazaar cover story published March 25, describing how struck she was by how thin the models were walking the runway. She said she had assumed the industry had moved past that point. Hathaway, whom Streep affectionately refers to as Annie, reached the same conclusion and did not let it pass. Streep said her co-star went directly to the producers to secure assurances that the models appearing in the film’s staged fashion show would not reflect those same body proportions. Streep called her a stand-up girl.
The intervention matters in context. The original Devil Wears Prada, released in 2006, had difficulty convincing fashion houses to participate at all. Many brands were reluctant to be associated with a film that fictionalized the world around Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Twenty years later the dynamic had reversed entirely, with luxury labels actively seeking placement in the sequel. That shift gave the production access to real runway shows and the scrutiny that came with them.
The sequel brought a different kind of attention
Streep also described how unprepared the cast was for the scale of public interest surrounding the production. The original film found its audience after release. The sequel attracted it before cameras had finished rolling.
In one city after another, the shoot required police barriers and crowd control. Fans arrived by the busload, and paparazzi were a constant presence, at one point coming into physical conflict with crew members while trying to get shots. Streep said the goodwill was genuine but the intensity of it was disorienting.
Hathaway had her own encounter with the chaos when she fell down a flight of stairs on set. The incident, which would ordinarily stay within the production, became public almost immediately because of the number of people and cameras present. She described being aware of three things at once as it happened: that she was falling, that she was being photographed, and that her crew needed to see her recover quickly. She got up, checked in with her team, and later told director David Frankel that she already knew she was going to be news.
Hathaway on aging and the moments that shift perspective
Separate from the production details, Hathaway spoke candidly in the Harper’s Bazaar piece about her experience as a woman in her forties working in an industry that has rarely made that easy. She said she did not expect to find a new sense of herself at 40 and pushed back gently on the assumption that earlier life is automatically the most fulfilling part.
She described a recent moment on vacation when she packed the wrong swimsuit, one she thought of as aspirational rather than the reliable one she usually reaches for. She wore it anyway, on a day when she was already feeling uncertain about how she looked, in front of strangers with phones. She said the shift came when she stopped measuring what she saw against an expectation and simply looked at what was actually there. She was 43. She said that once she saw it clearly, she was fine with it.
What the sequel is and when it arrives
Devil Wears Prada 2 is scheduled to open in theaters on May 1. The film reunites Hathaway and Streep under director David Frankel, who also directed the original. Simone Ashley joins the cast in a new role, details of which have been previewed in recent promotional material.
The original film, based on Lauren Weisberger’s novel of the same name, was released in 2006 and went on to become one of the more culturally durable comedies of that decade. Whether the sequel carries the same staying power is a question the box office will eventually answer, but the conversation around its production has already established that at least one person on set was paying attention to more than the script.
