In 2003, author Lauren Weisberger released The Devil Wears Prada, a story about a young assistant to the editor of a fashion magazine and her hellish experience with her boss. It immediately drew attention – Weisberger had worked for fashion icon and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and many speculated about the real-life parallels between Wintour and the ‘villain’, Miranda Priestly. The book became an international bestseller and was swiftly adapted into the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada.
In 2022, the story was reworked into a successful West End musical – and now, ladies and gentlemen, ‘gird your loins’, because we have The Devil Wears Prada 2, a sequel that no one (except, perhaps, Disney executives) asked for… but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The film reunites former Runway co-workers: Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci), Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt), and Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), picking up their stories two decades later. Andy is now an award-winning journalist, Emily works at Dior, and Miranda and Nigel are still carrying the torch at Runway. When the magazine is rocked by a PR scandal, these former frenemies are forced back into each other’s orbit to contain the fallout – and, in the process, confront what Runway still means to each of them.
I am a huge fan of the original. It introduced mainstream audiences to the wonderfully talented Emily Blunt (in only her second film role), gave us one of Anne Hathaway’s more grounded performances, and produced one of the most iconic characters of Meryl Streep’s career – which is saying something. The witty, disdain-laced dialogue is superbly crafted and recalls the sharpness of a similarly toned classic, All About Eve – who could forget Emily’s “Paris diet” or Miranda’s icy monologue on the fashion industry’s trickle-down influence? Beyond the dialogue and legendary characters, the film simply works as an easy-to-watch dramedy that still has something to say. Audiences saw both a glossy behind-the-scenes world and a very human struggle in Andy – balancing ambition with identity. It was lightning in a bottle. And the problem with lightning in a bottle is that you rarely get to catch it twice.
The sequel, for me, resembles another Emily Blunt follow-up: Mary Poppins Returns. It’s labelled a sequel, but the longer it goes on, the more it feels like a soft remake. Narratively, it hits many of the same beats: Andy starting yet another job she feels overwhelmed by; Miranda navigating power while answering to even higher powers; and Nigel still waiting for his moment in the sun. Have these characters really not evolved in 20 years? Even Theodore Shapiro’s score, which I loved in the original, feels recycled rather than reassuring. The once razor-sharp dialogue now feels diluted, as if calibrated for a more passive, algorithm-trained audience.
To its credit, the third act does attempt to push the characters somewhere new – but by then, the film has already played its hand. I found myself less engaged than mildly duped by the film’s polished marketing campaign. At one point, I genuinely wondered whether it might have been more satisfying (and certainly cheaper) to simply put these four actors in a room to record them reflecting on the original instead. Fans might have walked away feeling just as fulfilled.
At this point, you might expect a near-zero rating – but that wouldn’t be entirely fair. The familiarity the film leans on can also register as comfort. There is a quiet pleasure in returning to these characters; you don’t always care what they’re doing, you’re just glad they’re together again. I felt that warmth in fleeting moments. I didn’t hate the film – I just kept waiting for it to take a risk.
And that points to a broader issue in the industry – one I’ve raised before: is our obsession with the familiar beginning to suffocate creativity? Are filmmakers so risk-averse that they default to ‘safe’ – familiar characters, familiar arcs – rather than pursuing bold, surprising storytelling? Every creative industry cycles through this tension, but if you’re anything like me, you’d take bold ambition over a polished retread of last season’s success.
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