Anne Hathaway was the 9th choice for The Devil Wears Prada? The behind-the-scenes history of the film ahead of its sequel

Twenty years on, The Devil Wears Prada still manages to capture the imagination of the viewers. The sharp silhouettes, the withering one-liners, Meryl Streep's terrifyingly quiet authority — it set the template for how cinema talks about ambition, women at the top, and workplace culture that asks everything of you. But behind the iconic film is a behind-the-scenes story just as compelling as what made it to screen. Here are the facts worth knowing before you sit down with the sequel.

The assumption has always been that Meryl Streep modelled her performance on Vogue's legendary editor-in-chief. But Streep, in a recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, finally named her real inspirations: directors Mike Nichols and Clint Eastwood. “If Mike Nichols and Clint Eastwood had a baby,” she said, “it would be Miranda Priestly”. The softness of the voice, the stillness, the sense that she never needed to raise her tone to be feared — all of it borrowed from two of Hollywood's most formidable men. She even told Nichols how he was her inspiration for the role before the maker died in 2014. He was, apparently, thrilled.

She wasn't the studio's first pick — she was the ninth. Hathaway revealed this herself on RuPaul's Drag Race, adding, “But I got it. Hang in there. Never give up”. The makers had earmarked the role of Andy for Rachel McAdams, fresh off Mean Girls and The Notebook, but she turned it down multiple times. Several other names came and went before Hathaway, who didn't audition in the traditional sense but had to be patient, persistent, and creative — at one point leaving a Zen garden on a Fox executive's desk with the words “hire me” traced in the sand.

The supermodel, who played Runway staff member Serena, initially turned the role down flat. Her concern wasn't about the character — it was about being typecast. “I'm not gonna play a model”, she told screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who approached her on a flight. “I do that every day”. The filmmakers went back to her with a solution: a new, non-model role was written specifically for her. She said yes.

Miranda's iconic monologue about Andy's “lumpy blue sweater” — tracing how a colour travels from a runway collection to a discount bin — isn't just sharp screenwriting. It's an accurate description of how trend cycles actually work in the fashion industry.

Even with a costume department that put a million dollars' worth of clothing on screen, getting there wasn't easy. To be precise: the actual costume budget was $100,000 — the million-dollar figure refers to the value of pieces borrowed from designers and costume designer and stylist Patricia Field's industry contacts. The reason so many houses initially refused to participate had less to do with fearing the film and more to do with fearing Wintour. Prada's decision to assist Field eventually helped break the ice, and others followed.

Miranda's iconic monologue about Andy's “lumpy blue sweater” — tracing how a colour travels from a runway collection to a discount bin — isn't just sharp screenwriting. It's an accurate description of how trend cycles actually work in the fashion industry.

To lend the industry scenes authenticity, real editors and fashion insiders were cast as extras. If some of those background faces look like they belong there, it's because they did.

Her role as the martyred, magnificently stressed Emily was originally far more limited, and the director considered over a hundred actors before finding her. Blunt was on the Fox lot auditioning for Eragon when a casting agent asked her to read for Prada on tape. She did it in sweatpants, in a British accent, while rushing to the airport. Frankel cast her anyway. She delivered much of the role while genuinely ill, and the part grew around her performance.

What began as a lighter, more comedic project gradually sharpened into something more dramatic and emotionally precise during production. The pivot was largely driven by performance — particularly Streep's — which pulled the entire project into a different register than the script had originally inhabited.