The heterosexual male is about as welcome in the world of The Devil Wears Prada as a tofu burger at a hog roast. No, we don’t want dudes here, with their cynicism, tedium and neutral wardrobes. We want severe bobs and couture. We want Law Roach attempting to act. We want Balenciaga! The new sequel posits Lucy Liu as the saviour of the universe, which is somehow the fruitiest thing in a movie that features Stanley Tucci sporting a jaunty pocket square.
So why does The Devil Wears Prada 2, a follow-up far better than one might imagine for a 20-years-later “let’s get the gang back together” escapade, also insist on including the most criminally tedious heterosexual male to ever appear in a mainstream movie? Seemingly bred in a lab to make us all forgive original Devil Wears Prada boyfriend Adrian Grenier is Patrick Brammall’s Peter, an Australian real estate contractor who romances Anne Hathaway’s Andy. And I say “romances” when I really mean “stares blankly while Andy muses about her work life”. And I say “Peter”, because that’s what Google told me when I had to look up his name before writing this.
Peter arrives at the film’s midpoint, with Andy comfortably ensconced back at Runway magazine as its new features editor – having been sacked via text from her Very Very Serious Newspaper Journalism Job in the opening scene – and browsing new apartments to buy. Peter benefits from being the only straight male in the vicinity of Anne Hathaway who isn’t either as old as the Earth or a Bezos-style tech bro determined to ruin her life, so naturally she is attracted to him. But The Devil Wears Prada 2 hops around any of their actual wooing or dating, beyond a scant dinner scene devoid of wit or chemistry, and declines to give their relationship any real plot function either. (Some of this may have been lost in the edit, with at least one sidewalk dance sequence between Andy and Peter, captured by paparazzi during filming, not appearing in the movie.)
There is a sliver of tension to the pair later on, when Andy protests the existential importance of journalism versus the pointlessness of Peter building luxury flats, but this is slightly brushed over. And for good reason: why prattle on about any of that when Emily Blunt has arrived by this stage to deliver home counties bon mots and tell Anne Hathaway her eyebrows look terrible?
A question, however: why, then, include Peter at all? In a not-terribly-persuasive interview with Vanity Fair published last week, Brammell described Peter as such: “The function of that character is to be a supportive guy for Andy Sachs. It’s a nice, easy chemistry.” Sure! But it results in a character who feels like an unwelcome throwback to a different era of storytelling, where women in movies – and comedies in particular – simply required a romantic happily-ever-after of sorts, even if no one’s asked for it.
The original Devil Wears Prada seemed keenly aware of this, with Adrian Grenier – then riding high off the sleazy fumes of HBO’s Entourage – cast as Nate, Andy’s chronically unsupportive boyfriend. Nate would pout at Andy’s career aspirations, belittle Runway, and complain when she missed his birthday party because of her tyrannical boss, all things that led the internet to declare Nate a monster and, rather than Meryl Streep’s cutting yet dazzling editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly, the “real villain” of the movie. The film’s screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna once said that Nate represented a male spin on the “the naggy wife” trope, adding: “Nate was a ‘girlfriend’ part, really … a part that a lot of women end up playing, the ‘why aren’t you home more’ [character].”
Andy ended the film single, happy and working a fantastic new job, albeit after a brief dalliance with (coincidentally) another dreary Australian. And it was a real victory for her, and progressive in ways that made the movie so interesting to think and talk about. The film’s central love story was between Andy and Miranda, after all – their hesitant to-and-fro, Miranda’s cold effectiveness clashing with Andy’s above-it flappiness, the squeeing, feet-kicking brilliance of the pair releasing they actually needed one another.
Peter, meanwhile, doesn’t enhance or evolve Andy as a character, and the new film doesn’t seem interested in giving their relationship much of anything for us to latch onto. He doesn’t clash with her, nor Miranda, nor supply any words of wisdom or real romantic juiciness. (In fairness to him, this isn’t Brammell’s fault so much as the script’s – he is far funnier and more charismatic on the Aussie comedy Colin from Accounts, that he co-wrote with his wife Harriet Dyer.) Peter seems to exist so the film can say, “see – straight men can be nice, too!” Which is a funny message to insert into a movie that climaxes with Meryl Streep and Lady Gaga sniping at one another in front of a make-up mirror.
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‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ is in cinemas