THE FUSE

THE RUNDOWN

ELLE Women in Hollywood honoree Emily Blunt spoke about how The Devil Wears Prada changed the course of her career.
Reprising her role as Emily Charlton in the sequel has been “terribly moving,” the star said.
She also discussed why the 2006 film resonates so much today, calling it a “nostalgia bank for people.”

To many, Emily Blunt’s role as Miranda Priestly’s first assistant, Emily Charlton, in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada is one of her most iconic characters. But to the British actress and ELLE Women in Hollywood honoree, Emily is the reason she has her career.

Blunt spoke in her interview about reprising her Devil Wears Prada role in the upcoming sequel, which will be released next year. “It’s terribly moving,” she said. “Because it changed everything. David Frankel [the director] changed my life by casting me when I was an unknown. I’d been working, but no one knew who I was, and he was so sure that he wanted me in the movie, from a taped reading. That meant a huge amount to me.”

Emily “was such a ludicrous character,“ she acknowledged—but in the best way. “It did leave the door open for people to see me as more than a British period drama girl. It paved the way for character roles, which is all I wanted. I didn’t want to be an ingenue. I was curious to explore an entire bag of tricks.”

Blunt didn’t share any details about the sequel yet. But she understands exactly why the original film resonates so much today, nearly 20 years later. “The movie now is like a nostalgia bank for people,” she said. “People have watched that movie 50 times. They’ve watched it with a sick parent; they’ve watched it when they go through a breakup. It has been a source of comfort and escapism. And the movie is really incredible as well. I think it’s a beautiful movie. In many ways, what starts off as a comedy—with the shock factor of the things they say, how they say them, and the ruthless nature of the fashion industry—then turns into something much more poignant and deep. I think it’s that shift in tone that people really gravitate toward.

“What David Frankel and [screenwriter] Aline Brosh McKenna did with the script is really clever. That’s a really hard needle to thread in a world that could be deemed superficial, to create such depth in characters. [It also tackles] our understanding of ambition, what it looks like, what it means, what the fallouts are, what the undoing is. It’s a really empowering movie for women as well. Miranda Priestly’s character, if she were male, which the movie touches on, would have been deemed impressive rather than the nicknames that she was on the receiving end of. And I also get why people have really just salivated over all the one-liners; it’s so quotable. It’s delicious. It’s a delicious experience and I get it.”

Read her full interview here.

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