The fashion world may have changed beyond recognition since 2006, but The Devil Wears Prada has not exactly been sitting quietly in the back of the closet.
With The Devil Wears Prada 2 bringing back the central players from the original Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt comedy, the sequel is not just a nostalgia play. It is also arriving at a moment when magazines, luxury branding and workplace power all look very different than they did when Miranda Priestly first entered the room and lowered the temperature by several degrees.
For Blunt, the comeback has landed very close to home.
Emily Blunt’s daughters finally met Miranda Priestly
Blunt told E! News that her daughters with John Krasinski, Hazel, 12, and Violet, 9, watched the original film “for the first time maybe a year or so ago.” Their motivation was not complicated, or especially industry-driven.
It happened “partly ’cause their friends are very into it,” Blunt said.
Krasinski, meanwhile, needed no convincing. According to Blunt, “He’s a massive fan of the first movie,” and has apparently seen it around 75 times, give or take. That is not casual support. That is a home-viewing syllabus.
“So I think everyone was thrilled,” Blunt said of the sequel.
The sequel became a family trip too
The production also gave Blunt’s family a chance to spend time with relatives while shooting in Italy. Hazel and Violet were able to be with their cousins Matteo, 11, and Emilia, 8, the children of Stanley Tucci and his wife Felicity Blunt, Emily’s sister.
Tucci, who returns to the world of The Devil Wears Prada after playing Runway’s quietly essential art director Nigel in the 2006 film, told E! News the family overlap was surreal in the nicest possible way.
“They’re best friends,” Tucci said of the children. “To have it sort of cross over with work was just, like, weird.”
It is a neat behind-the-scenes wrinkle for a sequel that is already trading on one of Hollywood’s more durable ensemble memories: sharp performances, sharper coats and a workplace dynamic that viewers have been arguing about for nearly two decades.
Meryl Streep kept her distance the first time
Part of the original film’s mythology is how fully Streep committed to Miranda Priestly, the icy fashion editor inspired by the upper reaches of the magazine world.
Tracie Thoms, who played Lily, the loyal and blunt best friend to Hathaway’s Andy Sachs, recalled to E! News in 2021 that Streep barely raised her voice during the first table read. The result was exactly what Miranda would have wanted: everyone had to lean in.
“She didn't even look at Anne, except for when she talked about her sweater: ‘And then you got that hideous sweater from a Casual Corner’ or whatever,” Thoms said. “And I could feel Anne next to me just, like, wilt in her soul.”
Hathaway later explained at the New York premiere on April 20 that Streep’s reserve was a deliberate choice. Streep, she said, “loves the hang,” but believed the cast “would just be a little sharper, stand a little taller” if they were not too comfortable around her.
After making what Hathaway described as “a huge sacrifice” for the first film, Streep apparently changed her position for the reunion. Hathaway said Streep told the cast, “You guys can do it yourselves.”
Why Streep wanted back in
The reunion factor was not the only draw for Streep, who won three Oscars across her career and became one of the defining reasons the original film outgrew its glossy comedy packaging.
Speaking to Vogue, Streep said she was drawn to the sequel’s view of leadership and institutional pressure.
“I was interested in the business part of it,” she said, “that thing of carrying the weight of many, many people’s jobs, running a big organization, keeping it going somehow.”
That angle matters because the media business of The Devil Wears Prada is no longer the same ecosystem audiences saw in 2006. Print magazines have contracted, digital platforms have reshaped influence, and the old gatekeepers now operate in a messier, faster and less stable industry.
“With this one, I thought, ‘Well, where are they going to go?’” Streep told Vogue. “Now that everything’s disintegrating, now that these institutions are being undermined or exploded in a way that who knows what is happening in the world right now, I wondered what they were going to do.”
That is the real intrigue around The Devil Wears Prada 2: not simply whether Miranda still terrifies an elevator, but what power looks like when the office, the magazine and the business model have all been through the shredder.
Florals may or may not be groundbreaking. A sequel that knows the world changed while its fans kept rewatching the first film has a better shot.
