Part Bridget Jones’s
Diary, part Swimming With Sharks,
Lauren Weisberger’s bestselling 2003 novel The
Devil Wears Prada — about the hellish life of a top fashion magazine editor’s
assistant — helped birth the seriocomic, New York workplace-set chick lit
subgenre, capitalizing on the appeal of Sex
in the City. Yet its translation to the big screen was anything but smooth,
churning through five screenwriters.
‘boss from hell movie,’” says director David Frankel, “and I thought that it
was about two much more complex characters than just the naïf and crazy boss. It’s
about a young girl who has real conflicts about which path to choose in life. It’s
a coming-of-age story for a woman, and it’s about the price of excellence and what
compromises and sacrifices one makes in life to achieve that. (The editor) Miranda represents a lot of powerful women, and what price they pay for their
ambition. But we understand why she’s demanding in the course of the film and
we come to sympathize with her pursuit of excellence. And the movie’s hopefully
surprisingly moving.”
who stars as magazin-ista Miranda Priestly. “I don’t know what research she did,” admits
Frankel. “She was very careful not to let us peek behind the curtain of her
process. We gave her a lot of information about magazine editors throughout the
years… but I honestly don’t know if she read any of that. I just know she had
an angle of attack on the character that I thought was brilliant.”
other star, Anne Hathaway, for whom Frankel also has nothing but the highest
praise. “She really carries the film, she’s like a young Audrey Hepburn or
Julia Roberts,” he says. “She’s just remarkably vulnerable, engaging and funny,
and certainly her experience working with Meryl paralleled the story — which is
that of a young, ambitious girl who comes face to face with someone who might
be her idol, and she has to learn how to work with her and impress her, and
whether that path that her [supposed mentor] has chosen is the path that she
wants for herself.”