Meryl Streep has reflected on the popularity of The Devil Wears Prada with the LGBT+ community as the release date nears for the hit fashion comedy’s upcoming sequel.
The Oscar-winning actor played fashion editor Miranda Priestly in the oft-quoted 2006 original, and she reprises her role in the new film, which is due in cinemas on May 1.
Speaking to Out magazine about the queer audiences who have embraced the films and her character in particular, Streep said: “It makes me so happy! Would we have fashion without gay people? Forgive me, would we have anything? I wouldn’t know how to put together anything. It’s a joy to have made it with [the LGBTQ+] community in mind. Top of mind.”
She added that the new film has been well received by people from a wide variety of backgrounds, saying: “It’s cross culture. We’ve just been around the world with this. The reaction is the same in Mexico City as Tokyo, as Seoul, as Shanghai… I honestly was surprised. I really was surprised by the universality of the response and from so many different kinds of people.”
Along with Streep, the film also sees the return of stars Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci.
Of the returning cast, Streep went on to say: “I feel so lucky to be able to come back to something we did 20 years ago. Who gets to do that? We’ve had a whole lifetime. Look at Stanley Tucci! He’s blossomed! [Emily Blunt] blossomed at birth.”
The original film, an adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel of the same name, followed Hathaway’s Andy Sachs as an aspiring journalist hired as a co-assistant at a major New York fashion magazine, only to be mistreated by her demanding editor.
The movie made over $326m at the international box office and Streep was nominated for best actress by the Screen Actors Guild.
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Weisberger published a sequel to the novel in 2013, Revenge Wears Prada, while the film was transformed into a musical, which premiered on the West End in 2024.
Streep’s character is widely understood to have been inspired by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and the two women recently learned they are related.
A genealogy report conducted by Ancestry confirmed that Streep and Wintour are sixth cousins. They share fifth great-grandparents, Thomas Smith and Elizabeth Kinsey, who lived in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Although Wintour was born and raised in London, England, her maternal grandmother was from Pennsylvania. Streep was born and raised in New Jersey.
During a September episode of The Run-Through with Vogue podcast, host David Remnick asked Wintour if she was “hurt” by the film when it came out, but she responded that the movie was a “fair shot” and that Streep did a “fantastic” job portraying the character.
“I found it highly enjoyable and very funny,” Wintour said. “It had a lot of humor to it, it had a lot of wit.”