The Devil Wears Prada 2: Miranda Priestly was a net positive for Anna Wintour

Anna Wintour has been famous since the late-1980s – but not to all.

She was well-known within the fashion and the media worlds, but in the early 2000s, before the hyper-aware era of social media where we all know too much about too many people, there were plenty who wouldn’t be able to pick out Wintour from a line-up of one.

Then The Devil Wears Prada movie came out in 2006, and she was an instant mainstream icon. Your dad, your elderly neighbour, your plumber, they were now all in the know.

The Vogue doyenne and power player was widely believed to be the basis for the film’s antagonist, Miranda Priestly, as the film had been adapted from a novel written by a former assistant to the editor.

While Meryl Streep’s Oscar-nominated performance as Miranda has been immortalised in memes – the coat throwing, the icy “that’s all”, the cerulean jumper speech – it’s those rare but perfectly timed moments of the character’s vulnerability that really endures.

Unlike in the novel where Miranda was nothing more than a caricature of a villainous boss-from-hell, the film’s Miranda was human. You understood the price that was exacted to be operating at the very top of a vicious game.

Miranda wielded power and influence in a trillion-dollar industry that employs hundreds of millions of people, and she never took the responsibility lightly.

Did she want her steak cooked very specifically? Yes. Was she a hard worker and an advocate for taking fashion seriously? Also yes.

But the book, by Lauren Weisberger, was such a hit job on Wintour’s avatar, the real-life version was rightly sceptical about the big screen treatment.

The Devil Wears Prada’s creative team including director David Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna have previously spoken on the record about the roadblocks they ran into during production on the 2006 film.

McKenna found it difficult to get fashion insiders to talk to her because they were afraid that if it got back to Wintour, they would be blackballed from Vogue.

Frankel said they couldn’t secure famous New York City locations such as the Met Museum and Bryant Park because they were associated with the Met Gala and the New York Fashion Week, respectively.

Streep recalled this month, in a joint cover feature with Wintour for Vogue, no less, that, “Well, everybody was afraid of Anna on the first one, so we couldn’t find any clothes. Nobody would give us any clothes”.

Contrast the photos from the 2006 Devil Wears Prada premiere with the gala event this week for the sequel. What a glow-up. Granted, the mid-2000s were not a great time for fashion, but the sculptural, haute couture gowns worn by Streep (in Givenchy), Anne Hathaway (in Louis Vuitton) and Emily Blunt (in Schiaparelli) yesterday were breathtaking.

The glimpses we’ve seen of the sequel through trailers and social clips also point to an elevated wardrobe for all the characters.

The first film was a cultural sensation and remains a favourite in many people’s most-rewatched rotations, so it makes sense that more fashion figures are itching to be involved this time. But you can’t help wonder if Wintour’s changed relationship to the films didn’t help grease the wheels. Even a little.

Despite attending the 2006 premiere, wearing Prada (!), Wintour has largely been silent about the film until more recently. In 2024, she told a New Yorker podcast that she thought the film had a lot of wit and humour and that it was, ultimately, a “fair shot”.

“I found it highly enjoyable,” she said. “It was very funny. Miuccia (Prada) and I talk about it a lot, and I say to her, ‘Well, it was really good for you’.”

It was also really great for Wintour. Whatever harsh characteristics Miranda had, it was balanced by a nuanced portrayal. If people equated Wintour with Miranda, it worked in Wintour’s favour.

It added to her mythos and gave her shades (metaphorical ones, we know Wintour is already a master of the literal ones) in the public consciousness, and it raised her profile from niche to the norm.

If Meryl Streep plays you, or a version of you, in a film, that’s a huge flex. In that Vogue feature, Wintour acknowledged that, but couldn’t resist a little dig either. “I’d like to say it’s such an honour to be played by Meryl, however distant Miranda is from myself.”

Perhaps Wintour has softened over the past two decades, or perhaps she’s aware how much The Devil Wears Prada has been a positive for her image, but there’s no doubt that she has embraced the films as part of her personal and professional narrative.

She has long had ties to the film’s stars, and especially Streep. The two of them sharing that cover of Vogue, photographed by Annie Leibovitz and styled by Grace Coddington, with Streep dressed in character as Miranda, is nothing short of iconic.

That required a generosity on both their parts – apparently Streep roped Wintour into it – and something you would never have predicted in 2006.

“When I heard rumours that this new film might be happening, I called Meryl to ask if it was true,” Wintour told Vogue.

“I knew she would tell me if it was going to be all right. She hadn’t read the script, so she said she’d call me back. And that’s what she did. She read the script. She called me back and said, ‘Anna, I think it’s going to be all right’. She told me very little about what happens in the film but I trusted her implicitly.”

Wintour has also been really game in helping promote the film, appearing on stage at the Oscars ceremony as a presenter alongside Hathaway, and even throwing out the line, with perfect comedic timing, “Thank you, Emily”.

When Wintour visited the set of The Devil Wears Prada 2, she noticed a little detail in the production design that sent the filmmakers into a spin.

The scene was set in the fictional offices of Dior, and Wintour noticed some flowers in the frame. She pointed out that Dior would never have pink blooms, only white. McKenna, the screenwriter, moved quickly. “I came running out and I was like, ‘Dude, kill the flowers’.”

She even filmed a gag cameo, but it won’t make the movie because, according to Frankel, the director, Wintour “jumped her cue” so the shot wasn’t in focus. He was too scared to ask Wintour for a second take, so that little bonus will be an outtake for its eventual streaming release.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is in cinemas on April 30