20th Century Fox "By all means move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills me." — Miranda Priestly
The Devil Wears Prada's Priestly (played by Meryl Streep and rumored to be inspired by Anna Wintour) may have seemed like the boss from designer hell. But a few coffee runs and finding an impossible-to-find Harry Potter manuscript is nothing compared to what this actress, who sounds like the star of a sexier, druggier Prada sequel, put her assistant through.
New York magazine's The Cut posted a piece titled "I Was a Hollywood Personal Assistant," which is "one longtime personal assistant's story of her time working for a Hollywood household name." The problem (or, at least, the annoying part of it all) is that household name goes unnamed.
We're left to guess which actress made her assistant break up with her boyfriend for her:
She said, "Oh, we're done making a movie together; it's not really going to work; I'm sort of seeing somebody else. Could you just tell him to back off and leave me alone?" And she said this over the phone, over Christmas...So, that's what I did. You would think sending a text is the worst—no. Sending your assistant to break up with him is the worst. He had no idea it was coming, either, which was sad.
And leave a family function to drive her to get her palm read:
Once I got called in as an emergency because she said, "I need to see my therapist." So I had to leave my family and drive over and pick her up, because she was like, "After therapy, I can't drive." So she's in with the therapist, and I'm sitting there in the car, reading, and I remember seeing the therapist's name—but she wasn't a therapist...She was a palm reader. She was a palm reader that we got a discount for in the gift bag at an awards show. She was a psychic.
Oh, and NBD, just smuggle drugs over international borders:
Once when we went to a film festival, I flew out early so I could lay out the clothes she would wear. When she got in, she was like, "Did you get my stuff?" What stuff? "Oh, I put some stuff in your bag." Oh my God, I went on a fucking plane carrying drugs for you? I could have gotten arrested! You could have at least told me so I knew what I was doing, and put it in the bag that's not checked!...At least ask and say, "Hey, do you mind carrying for me?" Not that I would have said no, but at least I could have put it in a concealed location.
The assistant says she was lead to believe she'd be working as a production assistant in some capacity, for the unnamed actress's projects. The assistant's other duties included: Daily early morning Starbucks runs, childcare and watching the news so she could tell the actress what was going on in the world. Fairly standard stuff.
She says that the straw that broke the camel's back—that finally forced her to quit—was when the actress promised her a trip to a film festival (to work) and she thought it would be "an experience," but the actress uninvited her at the last minute to bring a guy she was dating.
(Because becoming a drug smuggler apparently was no big deal, she said she'd do it, she was just upset the actress didn't ask first. WHAT?)
On Second Thought: You might say this personal assistant is carrying an unfair vendetta against her old boss: Most of her duties were basic, albeit annoying, tasks any assistant would do. You might read this and say she sounds whiny, ungrateful (hey, she at least got to go to at least one film festival, even if she was there as a drug mule), nosy (she apparently snooped through the actress's prescriptions and called one of the actress's exes to tell him to get check for STDs), so her anonymous blog reads more like a vendetta.
On Third Thought: Maybe this is just The Cut's version of fan fiction and there is no anonymous personal assistant, just a bit of imagination and a rerun of The Devil Wears Prada on TBS. Either way, it's fun to guess who this might be about. So, any guesses?