Devil Wears Prada star Anne Hathaway opens up on why the much-anticipated sequel took 20 years to come to fruition – and the most important role of her life
It’s the sequel fans have been waiting 20 years for — yet no one is more excited about the release of The Devil Wears Prada 2 than its star, Anne Hathaway.
The 43-year-old, who returns as writer Andy Sachs, teases, “It’s everything anyone who loved the first one could have wished for and more. It’s really exciting to be able to share the story because it’s so good.”
But it’s not just the plot getting Anne excited. She was thrilled to be reunited with Meryl Streep, who plays Andy’s ex-boss, the formidable Miranda Priestly.
“It was just the best,” Anne says of working with Meryl, 76, again. “I was 22 when we did the first one. I thought she was the greatest living actress then and, 20 years later, she still is. I’ve been lucky to work with so many wonderful people over the past two decades but there’s no one like Meryl Streep. She is amazing. It was so easy for us to pick up with these characters again after so long.”
While Anne rightly considers Meryl one of the all-time greats, Anne is certainly up there too. Since making her film debut in 2001 in Disney’s The Princess Diaries, Anne has gone from strength to strength, winning an Emmy, Golden Globe and Oscar, which she nabbed for her role as Fantine in the 2013 adaptation of Les Misérables. More impressively, she did it with just 15 minutes of screen time.
Growing up in New Jersey, Anne longed to be on screen. It was her mother Kate, an actress herself, who worried about her daughter following in her footsteps. She needn’t have panicked. By the time she was a teen, Anne had starred in multiple plays, and aged 19, she won the life-changing part of Mia in The Princess Diaries.
“I can’t describe the honour of knowing that I’m involved in the moments where people need comfort,” Anne said about her choice of career. “It makes me really excited that my journey as a performer has connected with people.”
It’s safe to say fans truly connected with her role as Andy. The anticipation for The Devil Wears Prada 2, in which Andy returns to fictional magazine Runway , where Miranda is still in charge, is off the scale. Anne explains why it’s taken two decades to reunite the colleagues, which also includes Emily Charlton, played by Emily Blunt and Nigel Kipling, played by Stanley Tucci.
“It just took a while to come up with the right script,” she says. “We all wanted to know what happened to these characters and I know there were a few ideas for a sequel. So it’s taken a while but it makes perfect sense to pick up the story 20 years later.”
Anne has fond memories of making the first movie and admits the legacy of the film is quite scary to live up to. “Back then I didn’t predict the movie would be so huge, I don’t think any of us did,” she says.
“We all knew it was special, but no one could have known the reaction that was to follow. Going into this one, the level of interest has been incredible. People have grown up with the first film, with these characters and there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with that. This time felt different because of that but the same quality is still there. It’s the right story with the right people at the right time.”
Since the first film was released, a lot has changed for Anne, not just professionally. She’s now happily married to businessman Adam Shulman, but has kept a tight lid on her private life.
Her caution could well stem from her ill-fated romance with Italian housing developer Raffaello Follieri, who she dated from 2004 to 2008. He was sentenced to four and a half years in jail for fraud following their split, and as part of the FBI’s investigation, Anne’s private diaries were seized from his house.
Years later, Follieri recalled speaking to Anne on the phone one last time on the night he was arrested. He said, “If I remember, Annie’s last words were ‘I love you forever’ and we ended the call. That was 2am on June 24, 2008. At 6am I was arrested. I never spoke to Annie again.”
Anne, meanwhile, threw herself into her career and, thanks to roles in films such as Interstellar, One Day and The Dark Knight Rises , she’s been named one of the highest-grossing actresses of the 21st century.
But the biggest role in her life is being a mother. After marrying Adam in 2012, the pair welcomed two sons, Jonathan in 2016 and Jack in 2019, who she’s keen to keep out of the public eye.
“It’s my family, and it’s not just about me,” she said. “My family has needs, and one of the needs of children is that they need to be able to define their own lives.” That said, if her boys wanted to follow her into acting, she’d take a leaf out of her own parents’ book.
“I’d probably take the same tack that my parents did with me, which is, ‘You have all the time in the world to be a professional actor, you can only be a child once,’” she said.
“So I’d encourage them to study, to go to classes, to read, but I’d strongly discourage them from starting too young,” she continued. “I think they’ll be in a position where they’ll be able to go to college and figure out where they want to go from there.”
If her sons are anything like their mum, there will be no stopping them. For Anne, despite all her stellar roles, The Devil Wears Prada will always be her signature movie, and even now fans quote lines to her.
“I get that a lot,” she smiles. “It happened a lot after the first movie and it’s happened ever since. I get ‘a cube of cheese’ a lot. ‘I am one stomach flu away from my goal weight’ comes up a lot too.”
Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: mirror.co.uk
