Believe it or not, it has been nearly 15 years since the release of the iconic film, The Devil Wears Prada , even though it feels like it was just yesterday — a fact that certainly makes me feel old.
Where does the time go, amirite?
RELATED STORIES
Here are some behind-the-scenes secrets from the movie that fans probably don’t know!
1. Meryl Streep “jumped” at the chance to play Miranda.
In an interview leading up to the release of the film, Meryl admitted that when she initially read the script, there was something very intriguing to her about Miranda that she wanted to help bring to life.
2. Emily Blunt didn’t know how huge the movie would be when she took on the role of Emily Charlton.
“I never had any idea that my lines would get quoted to me every single week of my life since the movie has come out,” she told Variety .
3. The famous coat and bag scene wasn’t originally a part of the script.
The film’s creator, Patricia Field, revealed to Glamour that after taking the director, David Frankel, to a fashion show in Paris the idea for the scene was born.
“I said to David, ‘I want you to go to Paris and I want to take you to see what you’ll be shooting,” Patricia said.
“He did a lot of shooting in Paris. “It definitely inspired his additions to the script and one of the main additions to the scripts, were these fashion montages.”
“David would come into the office and say, ‘I just wrote a scene here and Meryl throws a coat, and another coat, and another coat,’ I told him, ‘You keep writing and my budget keeps going up and up…I’m going to need 25 coats!”
4. Meryl Streep insisted on having white hair.
“Meryl said that she wanted white hair and I was like, ‘Yay!'” the film’s creator told Glamour in 2016.
“What she wanted to do was not easy to understand by the producing community, because they perceived white hair as old, but white hair is not old. But at the end of the day, Meryl got what she wanted because she’s Meryl Streep and she gets what she wants.”
“I was so elated because, for me, white hair was something I could play against any color. The white gave me a backdrop and a bigger freedom,” she added.
“It gave me the opportunity to be more creative, because it started the palette, painting the portrait for me .”
5. Very little Prada was actually worn in the film.
In an interview with Glamour , the movie’s creator, Patricia Field, revealed that while Meryl did wear some Prada throughout the film, she mainly sported looks by iconic female fashion deisgners like Donna Karan.
“It’s important to build your relationship with your actor, because it’s a very personal thing, dressing someone and what was very nice about [Anne] is she was open, she didn’t have any major pre-judgments and opinions.”
“It was all exciting for her. I think that her personal style really developed after The Devil Wears Prada . She became more aware of designer pieces .”
6. Anne Hathaway was very intimidated by Meryl Streep on-set.
“There’s a scene where Andy and Miranda are getting out of a car, and in order to get the shot Meryl and I had to sit in the car and circle,” Anne said in an interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert .
“Now, Meryl was kind of an island unto herself when we filmed this, so I didn’t get to talk to her too much. But I was going to get a whole scene to sit into a car with her just her and me. And I was just freaking out.”
“And you have to understand, like talking can be hard for me. I was like, ‘I’m going to take advantage of this moment. I’m going to force myself to speak to Meryl Streep.’ But I couldn’t just talk to her. I couldn’t just be a person .”
7. Meryl Streep was initially offered an “insulting” salary, and had to negotiate for higher pay.
“The offer was to my mind slightly, if not insulting, not perhaps reflective of my actual value to the project,” she told Time . “There was my ‘goodbye moment,’ and then they doubled the offer. I was 55, and I had just learned, at a very late date, how to deal on my own behalf.”
8. Anne Hathaway’s criminal ex-boyfriend, Raffaello Follieri, didn’t let her work nights.
In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar , David Frankel revealed that filming The Devil Wears Prada was a very emotional time for Anne because she was going through a difficult time with her then-boyfriend.
He allegedly didn’t want her working at all but drew the line at working at night.
9. Emily’s character was supposed to be American. The British accent was improvised.
“[Frankel] said, ‘Listen I would have cast you off the tape, but the studio wants to see you one more time,” Emily Blunt recalled to Vogue .
“‘Can you did what you did but dress the part more?'” And so, she went British.
10. It inspired Anne Hathaway to take interest in high-end fashion IRL.
“She was just an emerging talent from Disney,” Patricia told Glamour .
“But now, she was a young adult and ripe for a new image in her new age in her new acting career as an adult actress.”
11. Fox originally wanted Rachel McAdams to play the role of Andy.
Before casting Anne Hathaway, Fox had already offered the role to Rachel McAdams who turned it down because she wanted to stay away from mainstream films and focus on more niche material.
12. Meryl Streep’s favorite thing about Miranda is how she is so assertive.
“One of the things that I admire about her is her willingness to just say directly what she wants, and she has an expectation that she will get it. That is not viewed in our society as an attractive quality in a woman sometimes.”
“People are very intolerant of it. In my own life, I have noticed when I have been meeting directors, that the same sentence with the same inflection can be said by a man, like: “Get me this.” But if the same thing is said by a woman, it’s seen as harsh and unacceptable.”
“That always fascinates me,” she told IndieLondon.
13. According to Patricia Field, the movie’s costume designer, Miranda’s look was not based on Anna Wintour.
In fact, it was based on Harper’s Bazaar editor Liz Tilberis, who has passed away.
It was their way of paying tribute.
14. Stanley Tucci only accepted the role 72 hours before he had to start filming.
I can only imagine that that must have been very stressful for the directors, cast, and crew!
Movies stick to a strict filming schedule (or they try to), so this must have been a curveball for them .
15. Playing the villain was actually very difficult for Meryl Streep to deal with.
“I did lose a few pounds, I think that was just anxiety. There was a lot of anxiety in this character. Everybody says, was it fun to play a villain? No. It was not fun to be in this person’s body, it just wasn’t at all,” she said to IndieLondon.
“So, maybe I took the pressures that she felt too much to heart. But I felt that was in the plot. I read the script and I read that there was pressure to replace her in her job as editor. And I know how replaceable middle-aged women are in our society.”
“I felt that and so it wasn’t enjoyable to be her. It was hard work dressing like that too, I felt like I was wearing or putting on underwater gear. I guess a normal woman would find it extremely enjoyable to wear those clothes. For me, I didn’t enjoy it. It felt like a straight jacket.”
16. The most iconic scene of the movie almost didn’t make it.
Originally, the monologue was only a few lines and they were considering cutting it since it didn’t serve the script.
But in true Meryl Streep fashion, she helped extend it, and, with her amazing acting, turned it into one of the greatest scenes ever.
17. Meryl Streep made another small but important change.
It was her idea to change Miranda’s last line from “Everybody wants to be me,” to “Everybody wants to be us.”
Considering its another iconic moment in the movie, clearly she made the right call there.
18. Director David Frankel changed the script, as it was originally a revenge story and he didn’t like it.
“I panicked. I didn’t like the script at all, it was satirical, so as a result it was unemotional. It was a mean revenge story. I rooted for no one. It wasn’t a fun angle into the world. There wasn’t one real scene in the movie. Four very talented writers had been working for a couple of years adapting it,” he told Indie Wire.
“Having read the book there were moments of more honesty and emotion in some of the scenes which their movie turned into campy satire. So I bailed on the call with Wendy and abandoned the meeting.”
“[…] For me the approach to developing the movie properly was to make Miranda Priestley the heroine, someone to be celebrated sympathetically rather than someone to be reviled. In my view of the world, we should be thrilled to have the people who are excellent at what they do, superior at their jobs. The fact that they are not always nice is irrelevant.”
19. Meryl Streep was inspired by Clint Eastwood.
“The voice I got from Clint Eastwood,” Streep told Variety . “He never, ever, ever raises his voice and everyone has to lean in to listen, and he is automatically the most powerful person in the room.”
“But he is not funny. That I stole from Mike Nichols. The way the cruelest cutting remark, if it is delivered with a tiny self-amused curlicue of irony, is the most effective instruction, the most memorable correction, because everyone laughs, even the target.”
“The walk, I’m afraid, is mine.”
Do you know any more interesting facts about the iconic film, *The Devil Wears Prada*?
Or were you pleasantly surprised by the facts in this article?
Either way, let us know down below in the comment section! We would love to hear from you!