Can you imagine the legendary Miranda Priestly without Meryl Streep’s face? No, we don’t think so too.
Turns out Streep almost did not make the cut for the 2006 Devil Wears Prada film, according to its producer, Wendy Finerman. On the Hollywood Gold podcast episode that was released Wednesday, Finerman told host Daniela Taplin Lundberg that Streep almost did not get selected for the role of Miranda Priestly because one of the members from the production team said “she has never been funny a day in her life.”
Firnerman further reiterated that the team had already mentally checked off Anne Hathaway because she was “a good, all-American girl,” but when it came to hiring Streep, their skepticism took over. Finerman recalled, “And Meryl, people thought we were crazy. I mean, I had people call me up and say, ‘Are you out of your mind? She’s never been funny a day in her life.'” He continued speaking about the incident, adding, “But this was clearly a different kind of world for her, and I think that that was part of the fun of the unexpected.”
Lundberg then went on to specify the 74-year-old Oscar nominee’s apt comic timing in past successful films such as Death Becomes Her and She-Devil but said that the majority of people associate her with more dramatic roles.
As the podcast episode proceeded, the producer shared a fascinating event that took place at the time, per People. During one portion of filming, Streep’s body double didn’t have the clothes needed to shoot a scene in Paris, so Finerman instructed her New York assistant to run home to grab her passport because she was being sent to make the delivery. She even got to fly business class on the free trip abroad to make sure the wardrobe wasn’t stopped and checked. This accounts for a total Miranda Priestly move.
Even the final product on the screen that fetched an Oscar nomination for Streep seemed fated. The actress herself recalled earlier in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2021 that she felt “miserable” trying to get into Miranda’s character. She exclaimed at the time, “That’s the last time I ever attempted a Method thing!”
According to People, recently on Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series, co-stars from Devil Wears Prada, Emily Blunt and Anne Hathaway, recalled meeting for the first time on set. The Bride Wars actress recalled an incident where Blunt had not yet been cast for the role of Priestly’s assistant, saying, “In my head — instant thought — I was like, ‘What a movie star!’ You were shedding stardust.”
Blunt,40, on the other hand, said, “I was so green coming into that situation,” adding, “And you were like the warmest embrace. Even though you were a colossal movie star at that time, you treated me like a complete equal. You are one of the people I’ve known the longest. We’ve known each other for 18 years.”