The Devil Wears Prada 2 and What’s Making Us Happy

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The Devil Wears Prada, while beloved and re-watched, might not seem like a movie that needed a sequel. And for 20 years, it went without one. But now Ann Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci all returned to their roles in the Devil Wears product. The film finds Andy right where she never thought she would be again, working for Miranda Priestley, the worst boss she ever had.

I'm Linda Holmes. Joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is Ronald Young Jr. He's the host of the film and television review podcast Leaving the Theatre. Hello, Ronald. Linda. Hello. Also with us is NPR Music Reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento. Hello, Isabella. Hello. Thank you for having me.

Of course. The Devil Wears Prada was based somewhat loosely on a novel by Lauren Weisberger, and it starred Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs, a young woman who wants to be a serious magazine writer, but lands a job as the second assistant. To the imperious, nasty, impossible to please Miranda Priestley played by Merrill Clay.

Miranda is the editor of Runway, a high-end fashion magazine. Stanley Tucci played Nigel, Miranda's unappreciated second in command, and Emily Blunt played Emily, Miranda's miserable first assistant. In the original movie, Andy ended up leaving Runway, but The Devil Wears Prada 2 finds her as a mid-career, laid-off reporter who gets an unexpected opportunity to lead the features department at Runway. This puts her back in Miranda's orbit and Nigel's and as it turns out Emily's as well.

It's really remarkable. Senior editor at Rome. You have. We're all so thrilled. Mm-hmm. You know what's funny is you've changed. You have. You're much more confident. Kept those eyebrows though, didn't you? Runway is in trouble for a few reasons, not the least of which is that it seems to be at the mercy of a publishing industry Nepo baby played by Bij Novak.

This puts Andy in the perhaps unexpected position of being on the same side as Miranda, sort of, and on the side of the magazine and journalism and maybe beauty.

Like the original film, the sequel is directed by David Frankel and has a screenplay from Aline Brosh McKenna. The Devil Wears Prada Two is in theaters now. Ronald, I'm gonna start with you. How'd you like it? I loved it. Oh great. I was surprised. Especially now in twenty twenty six when you see a sequel, you expect that they are just going to lean heavily on nostalgia and hey, don't you remember how much you liked this? Don't you remember how much you liked this?

And this movie has a little bit of that, but it's all baked into the actual characters themselves. You have the same director, you have the same writer, and you have four Powerhouse actors, four people who are really good at acting and seem attached to these characters, and they put them in a scenario that is relevant and makes sense and then just continued their stories forward from there.

So for me, that's all I really needed. Now I did have some issues. I have like two main issues, which I'm sure we'll get into. But other than that, in terms of me watching it and leaving, there were there were probably halfway through, I was just like, do I like this movie better than the original? No, that's wild. I would never like this more than the original. But I definitely liked it a lot. So I think it was a good sequel and a good template for what sequels should be.

Hmm, that's great. I am so glad to hear how much you liked it, Isabella. How about you? How did you like it? Yeah, I totally agree with Ronald. I was raised during the Hot Girls Are Journalists rom coms of the early two thousands. And of all of those, you know, 13 going on thirty, how to lose a guy in ten days, the Devil Wears Prada was my favorite, and I think that by far the best because it's less focused on the romance than it is on the actual career and the work.

Yeah, it's not even really a rom com, I would argue. It's not. Yeah, I d I agree. I don't think it's really a rom com. I was very scared about the prospect of a sequel because to me the first is just so perfect. And in general, I'm just opposed to like this sequel reboot era of pop culture that we're in right now. I think

Ninety nine percent of the time they're not necessary. However, I do think this one A added interesting things to a movie about journalists and about the current state of the industry and about the current state of tech.

I also think that they stayed very true to the characters in a way that oftentimes reboots or sequels do not. Like I think the Sex in the City reboot sort of fell into this pitfall of changing the characters that people knew and loved. I think this movie helped the characters grow while they still felt true to the characters that we fell in love with twenty years ago.

Yes. Interesting. I definitely did not like it as much as you guys did. My feeling was I enjoyed it while I watched it and I will never think about it ever again in my life. And it doesn't feel to me like a real movie. It feels to me like something you would do for like a charity event or a Super Bowl commercial. Like I enjoyed seeing these people play these characters again. I enjoyed seeing them with each other again.

But I think the story is extraordinarily thin and I think the first like hour of the movie is mostly what I would consider shenanigans and it's just kind of Andy going back into the office and she's lingering outside Miranda's office. And later in the film, they start to pull on a couple of threads that I think are substantially more interesting, one of which is

Miranda's deep grief about the sense that her identity, which is tied up in her work, is going away as a result of the way that her industry is collapsing. I think that's very interesting. they spend, I think, only kind of a couple of moments on it, unfortunately. The other is the way that mid-career professionals here, that would be Emily and Andy. find themselves kind of haunted by scars from bad experiences with old jobs and old bosses. I think the only thing I would really disagree with

is I do not think that this is the same Miranda from the first movie. And you know, the Miranda of the first movie was very different from the Miranda of the book. The Miranda of the book does not get the sort of soft redemption of the end of the movie where it turns out she's like, she's not that bad. She like smiles and she helps Andy get a job and none of that is in the book. So they soften her one step for the first movie. I felt like in this movie she lost.

almost all of her edge and becomes very much more broadly comic as opposed to dryly comic, which I felt like she was in the first one. I think for the street performance in the first movie is Absolute dry ice. It is dry as a bone and it is ice cold. This to me felt a little hammier. Well, there's a little more face pulling. There's a little more doing funny things like you know they're funny. And I

did not respond as well to that. So I really missed the Miranda of the first movie. But with that said, I enjoyed watching it. I like these actors. It doesn't really feel to me like a real movie, but I didn't have a terrible time.

I feel like in terms of Miranda, there's a lot to say between 2006 and 2026 in terms of our relationship with a character like Miranda, who at the time really didn't exist in front of media, especially not as a woman. Whereas we've had twenty years of all of kind of our relationships, whether it be with Women behaving like men or things that we would accept from men coming from the mouths of women that are somehow critiqued in this very specific way. We've had a long journey of that until now.

So I feel like when you walk into a movie like this, we have the benefit of knowing that this exists. already, even though in a lot of ways Miranda Priestley is the tip of the spear for this, especially in media. I felt like she was the same, especially when she's in meetings and they're having people that are kind of reeling her in.

in accordance with like all of the ways in which you're not supposed to behave poorly. They're kind of dinging her on every one of those lines that she's saying, which I really enjoyed. For me, it probably feels like it's more broadly comedic. Because we're expecting it in a way that we were not expecting it in 2006, for me personally, because I I really didn't see a difference between her character then and now.

Yes, Ashley, flag on the play. We don't need you this morning or ever. So pack up your things and uh H. R. will be in to see you shortly. She's older and has been like, Oh, now I gotta hang up my own coat. What's the world coming to? I felt like that part was it felt like an accurate evolution of that character in twenty twenty.

I do think part of it is just how much our culture and like the things you can do at work have changed and how they try to reflect that through the character of Miranda. But I do think Linda to your point, a lot of this movie was shenanigans. I felt like There were things that really hit home for me and yet they were mostly glossed over in favor of like a 20-minute montage of them wearing beautiful outfits, which obviously is kind of the point of a movie like the Double Wears Product.

That's what this movie is. I do think it was a bit excessive because I think the bones for like a pretty good story were there and it felt a little too long and it felt like the silliest parts of the movie were inflated over the parts of the movie that actually struck a chord for me, like on an emotional level.

I agree with that. As I said, I think it's later in the film when they're starting to get into more of the kind of melancholy that's built into this story. I became a little bit more intrigued by it as opposed to I I think you make a good point that some of the parts

that I didn't really need to spend a lot of time with. You end up spending a lot of time with. You know, obviously, yes, the montages, whatever. But there are also a couple of party scenes that are basically just look at all the people who are here doing cameos.

It felt a little bit like the last season of the Bear where you felt like you were just looking at the the list of all the people who wanted to do it and it felt a little excessive. You get a lot of that. There is a very rushed, very limited in impact. romantic sub subplot between Andy and this lovely contractor who's played by Patrick Brammel from Colin from Accounts, who is a

Gentlemen, I personally think is very sexy and charming. And I was a little bit bummed that you get so very little of that story. It's almost at a point where I'm like, If you're gonna show it that little, just don't show it. Like just go without it. Cause imagine how revolutionary it would have been.

To just say Andy doesn't have a boyfriend. That's not her focus right now. She's not really dating. She's worrying about the fact that she's been laid off and she has no job and she's trying to save her career. You've already got Miranda having her nice husband, Kenneth Brana. I was disappointed in the treatment of that romance. I wish so badly that this movie didn't have a romantic subplot for Andy because I think a big lesson from the first one is sort of like.

She's not focusing enough on the relationship. She's more focused on her job. That becomes a source of tension. And I think as time has passed, there's all this discourse about like, Her boyfriend Nate in the first movie was the actual villain, like let her have ambition. This is a movie about a woman who just has a really deep drive for meaningful work and for wanting to hustle. The romantic subplot to me felt both underdeveloped and rushed.

There was also an interesting tension there that I wish they would have explored a little bit more. Like one of my favorite lines of this whole movie comes in a b in a conversation between the two of them when Andy's just kind of expressing her frustration by

capitalism and like conglomerates buying everything up and spitting it back out and sort of like touching the third rail a little bit, talking about how much our lives and the things that we love have changed as fewer and fewer companies buy up all of these different Physical properties and cultural properties and make everything work. And make everything work.

However, it's like that tension between them just kind of fizzled out. And I I just wish that that if we were gonna get that, I wish we had dug deeper into that aspect of the relationship. How did you feel about romance subplacing?

I would have liked Andy to have been in a relationship that was just successful. I don't think that we needed the tension or don't have it at all. I agree with y'all. Because I feel like when you get to the story B. Of the tension reaching its peak, it ends up being the exact same emotional beat from the first movie, which is

I'm about to go or a trip overseas. Why don't we put this on hold until I get back? Which is exactly what happens in the first movie. You just swap out Paris for Italy. So I feel like what's the purpose of having this? Except to just add more tension when there's already enough bits of layered tension in the job that she has working at runway. And then also to y'all's point, I agree with the not enough time spent in the emotional uh part.

especially of Miranda Priestley, because there's a confrontation between Miranda Priestley and another character, in which I think some things were said that I needed to be resolved because it seemed unfair for both of those character developments. And in terms of uh like the development.

of this movie beyond the second iteration because if it does well, let's face it, they're probably going to do a third. And then it makes me wonder, so what's the fate of these characters in the next film based on where we ended in this one? There's a lot of shenanigans which I enjoyed, but there's also

the emotional beats that you have stay right there. That's good. These characters, that's expanding the depth of the movie. You had an opportunity to do that. And it feels like this movie doesn't exactly want to do that. Yeah. Ronald, you said you had two bees. That was both of them. We've covered both of them. as both of them.

So one was the relationship and the other was uh Miranda Priestley, her confrontation with this character. Got it. That just it really irked me because I felt like that could have landed in a different place. And then later I had to wonder whose side I'm on at that point. Because at this point, I I looked at Andy Sachs and I'm like, do you have a North Star? Is it really journalism? Is it really like what are we talking about here? I agree.

To me it still feels powerful, especially I mean, our colleagues at It's Been a Minute just did a great episode about this fantasy of, you know, women being maintained right now and what that says about women's financial freedom and women's role in the workplace in twenty twenty six. And I think there's something bold and really incredible about having a major movie with major stars that's like focused on different tensions women have in the workplace.

But it just I just wish it would have gone a little bit further.

Yeah, I I think I would have liked it a lot more if it had felt more like it was about that. You know, we talked about the cameos, but in addition to the things I would actually call cameos, there's just a tremendous number of people stuffed into this movie who do not have very much to do at all. Simone Ashley, who made such a strong impression in Bridgerton, is in it as Miranda's assistant, she has a couple of sort of funny things. Okay, got it. Alright, come on, I'll show you to your office.

Yeah. Amari, I need to pee? Please, I had a bent tea. Oh, was it worth it? Caleb Heron, who is so funny and so charming and has a a really limited appearance. Justin Thoreau is doing this to me very odd performance as a An over-the-top billionaire. Pauline Chalamet is in this for like has a like a line. I feel like she had to have gotten a little bit.

cut. Yeah. And I was just gonna say, Conrad Ricamora, who's a really charming actor who was in uh Fire Island and has been in some other things, apparently was in this and got completely cut. And You know, you've got very limited screen time with Lucy Lou. It just feels like there's way too much they tried to cram in here. And in some cases, it feels like

It's not much, but that's fine. Like the I think Kenneth Brana kind of drifting in and out as Miranda's husband. I think he has an impact when he needs to. But some of these people, it's like, why are we bringing in Helen J. Shen who was in maybe Happy Ending on Broadway and is really, really charming, but has a super small part as Andy's assistant who is supposed to be the uncool does it fit in assistant just like Andy was. It's there's supposed to be a parallel I think between them.

I was an intern this morning, but uh when a desk opens up, the interns get a chance to interview. And guess what? Nobody wanted to work in your department because it's not kind So I just like got it. Isn't that cool?

She doesn't do very much. And I understand, you know, populating your movie with lots of fun actors who I'm always happy to see is normally a positive thing. I was happy to see Tracy Toms, who plays Andy's best friend again and did in two thousand six. Love to see that. Really like her. But it felt at some point like they were trying to cram in so much stuff that they kind of lost track of making the movie about something between these characters. Because what I admire about the original film is

Yes, it's funny. Yes, it's got a lot of great clothes. Yes, it's got these sort of extremely early 2000s montages and all that. But like there is a real story there about making friends with people and finding your way through a bad situation and what should you put up with and what should you not put up with that has always had for me some emotional swift and this to me did not have that.

I think that there is an extent in which you season your movie with these types of little performances from known folks that is expected to raise the gravitas because the one person that did that was Kenneth Brana. Because there's a a couple of scenes in the movie in which Kenneth Branna is obviously there to be someone who is strong and a supportive slash oppositional force.

to Miranda Priestley as her husband, which I really appreciated that. And I feel like when it's done well, then you get a very good, accomplished person doing something like that. And when it's done poorly, you get Pauline Chalamet saying one line and be like, Hey, that's Pauline Chalamet and then disappearing. And I feel like it ends up being crowded out in that way. So I feel like there's a difference between saying like, hey, we're gonna season this with someone who does this well.

versus we've put nutmeg in this and it's all nutmeg now. It's just nothing but nutmeg and you can't taste anything else. We made a four hour movie and then we had to figure out how to make it into a two hour movie. Exactly. Exactly. At a certain point, like we don't need all of that. Let's focus on the fact that you have four incredible actors to build in this movie. We just don't need

that like the Lucy Lou, the Kenneth Branna, there's the bigger ones that didn't bother me as much as the smaller ones did. Cause I'm saying like to watch Caleb Herod get like three C Outrageous. At one point I just thought, why why in a chair the whole time? They're like they call me Charlie the chair and I'd be like, uh that's a fun visual gag, I guess. Yeah.

Oh no, it's okay. A million girls would kill for this show. There was a little part of me that's like, is this fat phobic? I'm not sure, but I won't mess with it. I'm like A little bit. I think a little bit. gonna have Caleb Heron in the movie, like let's get bring the yuck yucks, man. What are we talking about? Yeah. I mean I think he could've let him stand up. Yeah. Please. That would have been a start.

I think that would have been a start. Yeah. I feels to me like a Super Bowl commercial, but nevertheless, I did not have a bad time. And right now in life. If I go see something and I have a reasonably good time, even if I never think about it again, to some degree, that is a win. Uh so I guess that is sort of where I come down. But uh I think we I think we all had a a pretty good time at this.

Up next, we are going to talk about what is making us happy this week. Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What's making us happy this week? Ronald, I'm going to start with you. What is making you happy this week? The NBA playoffs are in full swing, and I love it. And the storylines that are unfolding right now.

For the non-sports watching folks, they are exciting and fun. There is an eight-seed in the Orlando Magic that is currently beating a one-seed in the Detroit Pistons. By the time you're hearing this, That series could be over already and an eight seed could possibly have beaten a one seed, depending on when you're listening, which it is a very exciting prospect and rarely happens in the NBA. LeBron James is playing basketball.

With his son. He threw an assist to his son in the playoffs that has never happened before. It is possible that we can see LeBron James. Playing more playoff basketball in the weeks to come. And I am so excited. I'm a kid in the candy store. It is making me giddy every night. I pull a blanket up to my chin by myself on my couch.

And I just go from game to game and I'm having a great time. And I know everyone's not a sports person, but just NBA basketball is one of my favorite things. It just reminds me of nostalgia of my childhood. And right now the playoffs are very interesting. For folks who have checked out a basketball and you wanna come back, now is a great time to come on back to watch the NBA playoffs, which are happening right now.

Love it. Absolutely love it. Thank you very much, Ronald. Isabella, what is making you happy this week? Mine is not as current. We're coming out of a pretty tough winter in New York City and my winter get through it remedy was a serious rewatch of Mad Men. I have just reached

season six. I think about getting on my couch and putting on Mad Men all day long. It's just such an incredible show. I hadn't watched it since it went off air. I just got to season six, which is when things really start to go off the rails for Don Draper. I it's amazing to watch. It's better than I remembered it. And my fun fact is that in the original, The Devil Wears Prada, one of Andy's friends is played by Rich Summer, who plays Harry Crane on Mad Men. So, you know, it's full of things.

What would be an unserious rewatch of Mad Men? You said you're doing a serious rewatch. Well, I think like over the years sometimes I'll like sit in on a season or something, but I was like, Okay, I'm gonna plug in beginning to end. I'm locked in. I'm locked in on Don Draper. I like that show too. Never not recommending rewatching Mad Men, which all of the seasons of Mad Men are streaming on HBO Max. So you can find it over there.

Thank you very much, Isabella. What is making me happy this week is the novel Yesteryear by Carol Claire Burke. It's about what you would consider a trad wife influencer. She has Several kids lives on a farm with her husband, does tutorials about making bread on YouTube, all that kind of stuff. One day she wakes up actually in 1855, living in very harsh circumstances.

Part of this is a satirical story about how this woman who has been vocally against feminism and modernity reacts when kind of the full force of what doing without those things would mean for her is is brought to bear on her own life. Part of it is a retelling that happens in flashbacks of how she became this influencer in the first place. And then part of it obviously is this mystery element about what's going on and why she is.

has undergone this radical change of lifestyle. Also, another crossover with uh the Devil Wars Prada, Anne Hathaway has already secured the um rights for this. I have heard intends to play the main character, and I will be fascinated to see where that comes out. But it is a really interesting book, Yesteryear by Carol Claire Burke, and that is what is making me happy this week. That brings us To the end of our show, Ronald Young Jr., Isabella Gomez, Sarmiento, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for watching. Thanks y'all. This episode is produced by Liz Metzger, Hafsafathama, and Mike Katziff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes and we'll see you all next.