Months of Meryl: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Thursday, August 23, 2018 at 10:00AM John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.
Meryl talking to director David Frankel during shooting
#34 —Miranda Priestly, ferocious editor-in-chief of Runway magazine.
JOHN: How do you solve a problem like Miranda Priestly? Or, more specifically, The Devil in Prada? How do you make walking into a room a distinct and indelible character trait? How do you continue assembling a mannequin’s outfit while simultaneously delivering a brutal lecture about the color cerulean? How do you not only resist but upend the misogyny inherent in your role? How do you grip the audience by their necks while still having them root for your victory? When your name is Meryl Streep, such issues are not problems or challenges, but more like Smith & Wollensky porterhouses, plump, juicy, bloody gifts, presented to you on a plate...
Forget the fact that Miranda is actually the side dish to Anne Hathaway’s entrée as Andrea “Andy” Sachs, new assistant to Miranda Priestly. Streep glides through The Devil Wears Prada with Olympian vigor, not breaking a sweat as she effortlessly hurls outrageous demands, outright insults, and posh coats as if by second nature, all while looking unimpeachably glamorous. That being said, Streep’s Miranda Priestly is not “the devil.”
Streep’s performance is an extraordinary recuperation of the harridan, unemotional female authority archetype and a corrective to entrenched cultural beliefs that powerful women are heartless bitches.
Streep almost single-handedly rewrites Miranda away from the vindictive, power-mad boss from hell, depicting her instead as a powerful woman at the top of her game with no time or patience for anything less than the high standards she keeps for herself and expects of her underlings. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Streep explained how she based Miranda on powerful male executives she had met in the film business. “Unfortunately we don’t have enough women in power, so most of my models for this character were of the male persuasion,” she says. “The anticipation for the film is almost bloody in that people are longing to go after Anna Wintour, or any woman in a powerful position. People love this story because they think that the knives are out, and that makes for good anticipation at the box office. I was interested in portraying a woman in a powerful position, and showing exactly how hard she has to work to stay there.” While recognizing Miranda’s abhorrent qualities are par for the course in her industry, Streep tries her absolute hardest to make viewers sympathize with Miranda’s drive for total perfection in her work. In the same interview, Streep elaborates, “Personally, I think that she’s an exacting, highly disciplined, demanding and ambitious person… and, in many ways, [I am] the polar opposite of this character. And yet I really understand her.”
Beside humanizing a potentially monstrous figure, Streep’s Miranda is an uproarious comic performance, an unflappable marathon of killer glances and ruthless one-liners as iconic as anything Streep has ever done. Even when given a riotous line or sight gag, Streep plays these moments as if she cannot be bothered to play them at all. In her centerpiece “cerulean” monologue, Streep never stops assembling the outfit at-hand; to do so would mean to dignify Andy with her full time and attention. The character can be unwittingly obtuse, like when she’s demanding to be flown out of a Florida hurricane, but also deliberately heartless, as in the myriad times she refers to Andrea as “Emily,” the name of her primary assistant, superbly played by Emily Blunt in her breakout turn. Miranda’s attitude towards Andy alternates between callous indifference (“Has she died or something?”) and out-and-out cruelty (“I said to myself, go ahead. Take a chance. Hire the smart, fat girl.”) My favorite line changes every week, but for today I’ll go with, “Get me that piece of paper I had in my hand yesterday morning.”
There is so much to say about Streep’s performance, and I’m interesting in hearing about your ambivalence toward Miranda. Have you sorted out your feelings about the role and the performance? Shall I gird my loins?
Streep discussing Miranda with Oscar nominated costume designer Patricia Field
MATTHEW: Let me clarify that my ambivalence towards the notorious Miranda Priestly has less to do with Streep’s sensational, career-revitalizing interpretation, which manages to find a real woman inside this supposed villain, than it does with the film itself, which casts away the cartoonishly warped Devil of Lauren Weisberger’s gossipy, condemnatory source material but occasionally mistakes oversimplification for humanization in the process. Streep, for her part, had little time for Weisberger’s fictionalized tell-all: “I thought it was written out of anger and from a point of view that seemed to me very apparent,” Streep told W magazine. “The girl seemed not to have an understanding of the larger machine to which she had apprenticed. So she was whining about getting coffee for people. If you keep your eyes open [in that situation], you’ll learn a lot. But I don’t think she was interested.”
Streep, along with screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, discarded a great deal of Weisberger’s Miranda, using this frothy but utterly engrossing adaptation as a glorious excuse to employ her unbridled creativity in the invention of a distinctive new character. Seeking to put as much distance between her fictional antagonist and Wintour, the real-life inspiration, Streep swapped the latter’s British accent for an American one, giving her Miranda a calm, menacing coo of a voice that the actress later claimed to have stolen from, of all sources, Clint Eastwood. Together, she and the great J. Roy Helland conceived of the character’s cropped, snow-white locks, drawing on everyone from the now-octogenarian model Carmen Dell’Orefice to Helen Mirren, the performer who ultimately bested Streep to that year’s Best Actress Oscar. She encouraged McKenna and director David Frankel to stop pulling their punches and heighten the character’s difficult behavior. On set, Streep threw herself into the part with focused commitment, icing out Hathaway once the cameras started rolling and often veering off-script in order to keep her film’s true leading lady on her toes.
Hathaway, playing a clear, refreshing, and necessary center of normalcy, received tepid praise at best when Devil arrived in theaters in the summer of 2006. It quickly became an unanticipated critical and commercial smash, over the years acquiring a loyal and slightly rabid fan base that includes John Krasinski, Ludacris, Nicki Minaj, and Chrissy Teigen and John Legend. This is a victory almost exclusively attributed to Streep’s legacy-enshrining tour de force, which is understandable if a tad unfair. Frankel’s filmmaking is average to the point of depersonalizing, leaving it up to his actors to give the film personal verve and dapper detail. Hathaway, Blunt, and Stanley Tucci, perfectly amusing as Runway art director Nigel, each deliver, picking up their director’s slack and offsetting some vanity-stoking turns by Simon Baker and Adrian Grenier. But, yes, it’s impossible to talk about Prada without returning to its raison d’être, which is Streep, who makes her every moment indelible, whether she’s flinging down those coats and bags with violent force or even managing to hang up a phone with a flourish. We, in turn, relish her appearances, which are fewer than one might expect, and impatiently anticipate her reemergence into the movie.
As Miranda, Streep finds all the right ways to fill a frame with imposing majesty while appearing to do the bare minimum with her composed and contained body, held upright with a dancer’s swanlike grace. Well within her third decade of screen acting, Streep knows exactly how much to feed the eye of the camera, aware that few things are more alluring than an actor’s willful detachment — and her inevitable, revealing deviations. Take the scene where Andy walks in on a domestic spat between Miranda and her soon-to-be ex-husband while dropping off the mock-up of the magazine’s latest issue: Streep’s eyes do nothing more than alight and freeze with horror as Miranda realizes her private life has been exposed in front of her guileless new assistant, the horror of having inadvertently confirmed her human vulnerability to someone meant to see her as infallible. Certain choices give the impression that Streep hasn’t embedded herself enough into the character’s glacial remove or perhaps shown her hand too easily: smirking with tiny, newfound delight at Andy’s high-fashion makeover or, later, raising her brows, batting her eyelids, and stroking her glasses across her chin with game-recognizing-game surprise at Andy’s Harry Potter coup. This Devil may at times be too easy to read and root for, but by occasionally dropping the ice queen routine, Streep distinguishes her scenes, if only in the subtlest ways, in order to show us new facets of what could have easily been a flat villainess. It matters when Miranda’s mask slips because Streep is actively using these moments to describe something previously unknown to us, like the character’s ability to be swayed by professional competence or her nervous, stuttering timidity in the face of Jacqueline Follet, rival editor of French Runway.
Tell me your thoughts about the most decisive slip of this mask — the scene in which Miranda, bare-faced like a kabuki queen scrubbed clean of her makeup, cries over the end of her marriage.
JOHN: When Andy enters Miranda’s hotel room to find her in sweatpants, sans makeup, eyes swollen, and surrounded by tissues, the sight of this alone is cause for alarm, but it gets worse: Miranda has just been sent divorce papers from her third husband. Streep, in a scene she herself solicited, adds a more vulnerable and lonely shade to Miranda’s character while still retaining the character’s essential aloofness. (Streep called it “the part of the film that makes the whole rest of it worth doing. Without that scene, what is there?”) Miranda reveals that her ex-husbands are at first attracted to her power and confidence, only to be later repelled by the same qualities. Miranda is especially saddened for her daughters, who will have to say goodbye to yet another “father figure” and be exposed to bilious articles commenting on their mother’s frigid and contemptible demeanor. In what is essentially her “deglam scene,” Streep demonstrates her incredible knack for cutting right to the emotional core of a character to reveal the humanity beneath a difficult woman, a preoccupation and career-long project that underscores many a Streep performance.
Though it is ultimately questionable that audiences needed this scene to emphasize Miranda’s humanity (Was Miranda not a human when she was instead wearing those Saint Laurent suits and calling the shots?) this moment nonetheless excises Miranda’s “villainy” from the film, an unexpected achievement that, as you’ve mentioned, deviates from the source material and feels generated by Streep herself. In the following scene, Andy defends Miranda from Christian’s (Baker) criticisms of her boss as merely a harsh and unfeeling tyrant, rightly pointing out that “you wouldn’t be saying that if she were a man. You’d be admiring her strength, her grit, her tenacity, but because she’s a woman, those things make her a ‘ball-buster.’” I’m glad the script dares to utter such a disparity between conceptions of powerful men and powerful women, but feel disappointed that this valid claim is swallowed up by a swoony sex montage and never addressed again. Miranda’s last-act scheme to upend Jacqueline Follet’s and her confidante Nigel’s promotions in a nasty bit of onstage maneuvering blots out Streep’s work to dimensionalize Miranda as anything other than a calculating despot. And finally, when Andy frees herself of Miranda because of this very scheme, we’re meant to celebrate her departure into “real journalism” and scorn Miranda’s return to her slow-mo paparazzi cocoon, as the dragon lady finally folds herself back into her dark chambers, sealed off from the world while Andy confronts it via a hardscrabble newspaper job.
MATTHEW: I’m of two minds about Miranda’s “crying” scene. As written, it reads as a slightly reductive scene, one of those strenuous Humanizing Moments in which the appearance of big, salty tears is meant to convey some sort of truer self lurking beneath the elegant surfaces of this hostile woman. The scene wants to expose the real Miranda Priestly, but is that to say that this more vulnerable Miranda is more authentic than the one who quietly upbraided Andy for daring to think she was somehow above the “stuff” that defines the industry to which Miranda has devoted her life?
If you listen close enough to Streep during the “cerulean” monologue, which strikes me as the most revealing moment in the entire performance, you’re likely to hear a fiercely honest defense of an entire profession, one given further credence by the glowing conviction of Streep’s reading.
Streep works her brilliance again as Miranda bemoans her latest divorce, achieving a thorny poignancy that complicates the conversation, betraying and deflecting from Miranda’s sensitivity at her own measured pace. When Andy, oozing unabashed empathy, asks Miranda if there’s anything else she can do, Streep’s forbidding rejoinder — “Your job” — rewrites this scene from a simple unmasking to a doubling-down of Miranda’s purpose: broken marriages and hurt feelings may be the cost of her work, but Miranda won’t forfeit professional glory for the sake of a happy home life — or even lasting friendships, as her casual sacrifice of Nigel will later prove. Watching Streep beam with flashes of genuine, conspiratorial warmth in the backseat beside Hathaway during their final dialogue scene together, we realize that Miranda is grateful for Andy’s loyalty but perhaps even more pleased to be in the company of another ruthless go-getter.
The actress layers this scene like she does every other, letting Miranda’s guard down with Andy to express sincere admiration before using a single, well-appointed gesture (in this case, the donning of sunglasses) to signal the reassertion of the boss-assistant barrier. Streep’s performance is full of moments in which a condensed yet conspicuous choice clues us in to a character who might have been continually kept at a distance. Even in this comparatively minimalist turn, we see the work, the decision-making, that unites all of Streep’s performances. When Miranda purses her lips in horror, narrows her eyes into a withering glare, or relaxes her face into the tiniest of grins, these choices mean something and Streep has made her approach transparent enough for viewers to decipher such meanings. Maybe this is why The Devil Wears Prada remains such a valuable staple for young audiences, any number of whom might be aspiring actors eager to see how a screen performance is put together, piece by piece, choice by choice. Many of Streep’s harshest critics have used the legibility of her style as ammunition against the actress. You know, “wheels turning” and all that. But just because the magician occasionally lets us look behind the curtain doesn’t make the act itself any less magical.
Catch up with 'Months of Meryl'
- Julia (1977)
- The Deer Hunter (1978)
- Manhattan (1979)
- The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979)
- Kramer vs Kramer (1979)
- The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)
- Still of the Night (1982)
- Sophie's Choice (1982)
- Silkwood (1983)
- Falling in Love (1984)
- Plenty (1985)
- Out of Africa (1985)
- Heartburn (1986)
- Ironweed (1987)
- A Cry in the Dark (1988)
- She-Devil (1989)
- Postcards from the Edge (1990)
- Defending Your Life (1991)
- Death Becomes Her (1992)
- The House of the Spirits (1993)
- The River Wild (1994)
- The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
- Before and After (1996)
- Marvin's Room (1996)
- Dancing at Lughnasa (1998)
- One True Thing (1998)
- Music of the Heart (1999)
- Adaptation (2002)
- The Hours (2002)
- The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
- Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
- Prime (2005)
- A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
Reader Comments (45)
I love that Meryl never elevates this part to "cartoon character" boss from hell, like a Dabney Coleman in 9-to-5, for instance.
She almost never raises her voice, or shouts, or "overacts" the way some potentially might have when playing this part.
That's what makes her so effective and chilling. She will quietly, cooly cut you to shreds.
Simply Iconic,Made older fans love her even more and won new adoring followers,a modern day classic,wish she'd have won the Oscar.
I love this movie, and it definitely falls into the classic category for me. It is pure pleasure to watch. It perfectly captures what is simultaneously great and terrible about the world of high fashion. And I don’t think there has ever been a female character like Miranda Priestly – not to be too meta, but she is a long way from Joanna Kramer in 1979 who made $36K a year at an ad agency. Miranda runs the show, and Streep’s sly performance is movie perfection. I also love everyone else in it, including Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, Anne Hathaway, and Adrian Grenier, and I tip my hat to Patricia Fields for great costuming.
I was one of those who had written off Meryl Streep unintentionally, mainly because she was "before my time" and had no interest in diving into her back catalogue. I was young and stupid, what can I say? And this role was a revelation for me, and I've followed her since then. This series has been a treat, and this was the part I was looking forward to most, because in many ways, this is the Meryl I will always remember and cherish.
Amazing performance, probably my favourite from Meryl and yet... I barely nominate her in 2006. Such a strong year for female leads. For the record, my ballot is -
1) Maggie Gyllenhaal - Sherrybaby
2) Penelope Cruz - Volver
3) Judi Dench - Notes On A Scandal
4) Meryl Streep - The Devil Wears Prada
5) Kate Dickie - Red Road
6) Catherine Frot - The Page Turner
7) Gretchen Mol - The Notorious Bettie Page
8) Helen Mirren - The Queen
9) Ellen Page - Hard Candy
10) Martina Gedeck - The Lives Of Others
Basically, Oscar Bait cinema was AMAZING that year - switch Winslet for Gyllenhaal (who we all think was in 6th that year anyway and... it would be possibly the greatest Oscar choices for the category ever?)
I adore the film even if Hathaway's character is trash (she tries VERY hard to get the audience on side but Weisberger is so clearly arrogant, un-self-aware,pompous and vindictive that it's literally impossible to redeem her - no wonder we all gravitate to Miranda as our heroine).
Tucci and Blunt are both perfect and both make my Top 5 in their respective Supporting Categories.
As expertly assessed, a film that is great BECAUSE of its actors (and despite its ropey direction, script and soundtrack)
To add, it pains me that I don't include Shareeka Epps, Gong Li and Kirsten Dunst in that Top 10...
I love both this movie and Meryl Streep's brutally witty performance as a fashion diva.
My favourite line changes but I will go with,
"by all means, move at a glacial pace, you know how that thrills me".
The reason we are horrified and thrilled by Miranda Priestley is because she is so brutally honest emotionally. She honours you with your name when you have proven yourself competent in your job. She expects excellence, done quietly with style.
The Devil Wears Prada ushered in a new era for Meryl Streep, she suddenly became the summer blockbuster queen. Alternate programming choice in the August slot for those who didn't feel like going to another super hero movie. I love the fact that this little chick flick was a box office success globally.
And this was the movie that introduced Meryl Streep to a new generation of fans.
Just a side-note, I want to make note of the fact that Streep herself became much less publicity shy from "The Hours" on. Going on such shows as Oprah, Ellen, The View, and showing up at the Golden Globes with another hilarious monologue. Her Globes speech from this film was a cheer leading speech for films with women and a demand for more.
Her image went from retiring prestige actress to "funny, beloved, legend".
There's a lot to love about "The Devil Wears Prada" - it gave us the new blockbuster Streep plus Emily Blunt.
"That's All"
Here Here on Tucci,2 times he's been really worthy and they nominate him for whatever was going on in The Lovely Bones,at first he seems like a silly fawning queen but sells his lifestory v well and the job commitment and the Miranda loyalty,I believed his character,he is able to sell elation with doubt when he thinks he has the job and true crushing awarensss when he realises he hasn't,top notch work from him,he and Streep make a gr8 pair.
Blunt is simply sublime Joan Cusack dialled to 11.I get more laughs from her skulking away in the background than anything Anne does or says.
One of the greatest movie star performances of all-time. People will still watch this movie 50 years from now, and then they'll try to figure out how Mirren won the Oscar for The Queen.
Meryl Streep is one of the best actresses of all-time. Her performances are always brilliant.
Unfortunately, this is probably the last time I truly loved a Meryl Streep performance.
Streep provides a master class in the art of underplay as she perfectly internalizes the power of Miranda, making every move and sound Miranda makes completely riveting. She’s the only actress who can command a movie screen without raising her voice above a stage whisper. The fascinating combination of fear and respect Streep fuses into Miranda is brilliant. She makes Miranda funny, terrifying, and completely human from one scene to another with seemingly little effort, and has created one of the most richly complex and entertaining characters of her career.
My 2006 lineup:
Meryl Streep- TDWP (Winner)
Judi Dench- Notes on a Scandal
Laura Dern- Inland Empire
Maggie Gyllenhaal- Sherrybaby
Penelope Cruz- Volver
That’ all.
I.C.O.N.I.C.
Two favorite lines, but the delivery is what make them sublime:
1. Details of your incompetence do not interest me.
2. No, no, that wasn't a question.
Nice write-up, gentlemen.
Maybe Helen Mirren was the best, maybe she wasn't. Maybe Meryl Streep was the best, maybe she wasn't. Maybe Judi Dench was the best, maybe she wasn't. I would have liked to have seen a 3-way tie between those three. They were all sublime. My choice for the other two nominees would have been Kate Winslet and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
And three cheers for Stanley Tucci, the unsung hero of the year.
The enthusiasm for this project is leaving clearly for the writers who volunteered for it. Streep's filmography is a chore to get through. Most celebrated film actress with few actual great films to highlight.
My nominees
Streep,Dench,Gyllenhaal,Winslet and Bening.
/3rtful - I rarely reply to your trollish remarks but your comment is such an obvious lie, I can only conclude you are a die hard Trump supporter as well.
I pity you.
As the first post stated, Miranda in the novel was simply a caricature, a subject of "hate" by Weisberger. So was Nigel. Yikes.
Meryl turned her into someone to respect and admire, even to root for. Just her cerulean blue monologue throws the whole novel into the fire.
It was her luck the movie focused on sweet Andy, so she was easily the scene stealer and also not over-used.
The hotel-Scene might be the second best Scene of a Meryl movie, Right after "the Choice Scene" in Sophie's Choice.
It was played so quietly, a very intimate Moment, no Make up, no Music, a short glimpse of a failed marriage, the sorrow of a mother how this will effect her children's life. Just Wonderful.
Helen Mirren was just unbeatable that year, sadly. But it's already a classic turn, so that's the best it can get.
I pity you.
You should only pity me for not having a man.
This is movie is half-great. I'll gladly watch all the scenes that take place at the magazine (but skip past the Simon Baker stuff - man does he just not work in that film for some reason, he doesn't even LOOK good and he's normally so attractive). But all the scenes with Andy's boyfriend and friends are awful. They are just such trash and totally unreasonable toward Andy and yet we're supposed to agree with them. That last scene with Grenier is just terribly written. He was the bad partner in that relationship, not her.
But every scene with Streep is so re-watchable. As soon as I heard her speaking in a whisper I knew this was going to be genius. She and Blunt were just so good, together and separately.
Great movie. And it’s the opposite - this series has shown how many great and memorable movies Streep has been featured in. Thanks for the write up.
Love the series and this classic performance so much!!
LadyEdith - I love that line, too. As with all her lines, it's just so perfectly delivered.
Nice job, guys! I don't know if this is Streep's best role, but it's definitely her most fun. And I adore both Tucci and Blunt - and yes, Hathaway, even if her character's the least interesting of this crowd.
The film that proves that Meryl Streep is...... $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Plus, I think it was the right film and at the right time that introduced Meryl to a new generation of movie-goers, proved that Anne Hathaway is here to stay, and introduced audiences (who haven't seen My Summer of Love) to Emily Blunt. It's been around for 12 years it has become a film that people still love to talk about.
The one I've been waiting for.
This movie is CRIMINALLY-underrated. For my money, it's one of the best comedies of all-time, and should stand alongside revered works like The Philadelphia Story, Some Like It Hot, and Tootsie. The cast is magnificent all-around, even Adrian Grenier's performance (which I considered the weak link and still do) has grown on me over time. Tucci and Blunt should have been Oscar nominees, and Hathaway would have been closer if not for...
Meryl. This is EASILY my favorite Streep performance. One of the greatest star turns of all time, and while I love Mirren, Streep should have won without a contest. She's so frightening but so magnetic. She knows exactly when to give that slightest hint of approval, that both Andi and we find ourselves seeking more. The Devil indeed. Then, she finally lets her guard down and we want to do anything to make it better. Who cares about the people she's wronged to get to where she is - they all deserved it.
I find that contemporary films, especially those set in a modern urban society, often age poorly. Not so with TDWP - I believe its admiration will only grow over time.
YAAAAASSSSS
Quite honestly one my favorite movies (if not my favorite) of all time and my favorite Streep performance. Every line reading, every facial expression....soooo good!
i think this is one of her three best performances. (the triple crown for me is DEVIL WEARS PRADA, SILKWOOD, and POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE. This movie is so rewatchable it's insane. I'm so so so proud that I gave Streep the Gold Medal for it in its year and also that I had the movie on my top ten list (even though people dinged me at that time for that)
Genius performance by Streep. This performance is what has forever cemented Streep as legend and icon. Was also a very great year for lead actresses.
@,/3rtful. You continue to be an asshole....And it is so obvious why you do not have "a man"a
P.S. You really should learn to write properly.
Sorry Nat take out PFTE add Bridges for me that's the Streep triple crown.
Fantastic movie, fantastic performance - this is the definitive modern Streep performance.
With all that being said, nothing will take my gold medal from Judi Dench that year - her performance in Notes is sublime.
Love this movie which is perfect except for the scenes with Andy's boyfriend- he is useless
Any thoughts about turning this series into a book once finished?
Kermit_the_frog- How can you be so right about Maggie Gyllenhall Sherry Baby but SOOOO wrong about Penelope Cruise (who's always awful) but particularly painful in Almodovard's (which I worshiped btw) worts film EVER?
Here's the thing... I knew Meryl Streep was The Greatest Actor. But as a fledgling movie lover, I actually hadn't seen that many Streep films before Devil Wears Prada. I think at that point I had only seen The River Wild, Death Becomes Her, Music of the Heart, Adaptation, The Hours, and Angels in America.
Some good stuff in there, but not exactly her CLASSICS. Then comes Prada and wow. That was when I did my best to always watch a movie she was in and eventually I did see her more lauded older films (Silkwood, Sophie's Choice, Bridges of Madison County, Postcards from the Edge, Kramer v. Kramer, etc.). All thanks to Miranda Priestly!
This is a fun movie that's impossible to resist rewatching. A great cast (with a few exceptions, like the unhygienic chef boyfriend).
I'd read the book before the movie and agree with kermit (and Streep) that the assistant is unsympathetic. To me, she was whiny, lazy, and entitled. My sympathy was all with the boss. Clever rewriting and hard work by Hathaway to turn that around.
I think the Oscars got it right that year though. Helen Mirren, with her range, could have equally played Miranda Priestly and been wonderful. But Streep could not have played The Queen.
Thank you for this great series. Tom, I think Joanna's "cush" job was at a sportswear company? Ted was in advertising but I like your point. This movie is completely entertaining and iconic.
I know you all love Glenn Close and Annette Bening, but give this role to any of them and they would make it a histrionic extravaganza. Streep is subtle in every single scene; she modulated even the tiniest comma in the screenplay.
Ryan - that's cool. I had a similar moment with Charlotte Rampling after Swimming Pool - I tried to watch anything I could get my hands on after that.
Jumping into the fray to mention what I think is the film's best shot, as well as the best shot of Meryl's career. Andy brings the book to her house, the twins tell her to bring to upstairs, Miranda walks by mid-argument and shoots Andy a look. I can't even describe her face in that moment. It's unlike anything I've seen on film before or since.
Anne Hathaway couldn't have asked for a better project at this moment in her career. It closely aligned her with a second living legend (the first being Julie Andrews) and proved she could carry a movie.
Without it, who knows if she would've gotten Rachel Getting Married or Les Mis, two movies she deserved to win Oscars for.
I know Streep, Blunt and Tucci get all the love but for me it's a second star-is-born moment for Hathaway, one of the greatest gifts Hollywood has given us this century!
I certainly appreciate Miranda more now then I did all those years ago. Having worked in an industry (hospitality) where I was surrounded by incompetence and seemed like the only person making the machine go, I understand her more. You have to be professional to get everything going and have high standards to maintain everything and have no time for fluff. I discovered later that some subordinates of mine were actually afraid of me!
Had to sit in the BACK row of the packed theater to see this on opening night. Their trailer basically showed the opening scene of Miranda entering Runway, and that buzz more than did the trick to sell the film and begin the Meryl Renaissance. Just adore this film and watched it so many times! This would have been an inspired win and could have prevented her later ugh win, but I was too much in the tank for Mirren at the time. She could have easily won supporting though. I would have also nodded Blunt and Tucci.
Yes- I remember thinking she would have been a slam dunk in supporting that year.
I'm glad they din commit cat fraud n placed Meryl as supp bcos Its practically her show!! Imagine the brickbats she's gonna get if she had gone supp n won.... Alicia Vikander is still view as a pariah for stealing tt Oscar a few yrs back when she's clearly a co-lead in The Danish Girl