20th Century Fox Home EntertainmentJune 30 marks the day the cult comedy film The Devil Wears Prada turns 10...that's as many skirts Miranda Priestley needs you to fetch from Calvin Klein.
The movie stars Anne Hathaway as a naive, starry-eyed journalism school graduate Andy Sachs, who hopes to kick-start her career by working as an assistant to Meryl Streep's character, Priestley, the powerful and ruthless editor of the fictional fashion magazine Runway. The film also stars Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker and Adrian Grenier.
In honor of The Devil Wears Prada's 10th anniversary, several of the actors and others involved in the making of the film reminisced about their time working on the movie in an interview with Variety. Check out seven things we learned.
1. Rachel McAdams almost played Andy: That's right, Hathaway's part almost went to Mean Girls' Regina George. According to Variety, studio Twentieth Century Fox wanted a big movie star for the role and courted McAdams, then known for The Notebook. The actress turned down the offer multiple times, citing her desire to step away from mainstream material.
2. Anne Hathaway got creative so she could stand out and be cast as Andy: The actress, then known for family movies such as The Princess Diaries and Ella Enchanted, left Carla Hacken, then-executive vice president of Fox 2000, a message on her desk—she traced the words "hire me" in the sand of a Zen garden.
"I didn't have to audition," the actress told Variety. "I had to be patient. I wasn't the first choice."
3. Anne Hathaway was going through an "emotional" time: While filming, the actress lived with then-beau Italian businessman Raffaello Follieri. The two broke up in 2008, months after he began a four and 1/2-year prison sentence for fraud.
"Annie was very emotional," director David Frankel told Variety. "She was living with a guy...he didn't want her to be working at all; he hated that she worked nights. She was always fragile when we shot late."
4. Meryl Streep was the first—and only—choice to play Miranda: "I don't remember anything other than, 'Please God—let it be Meryl,'" Hacken told Variety.
She said that when Streep's agent called and said she would meet with the director, she put him on hold and cheered, "Yes!"
5. Meryl Steep is partially responsible for the addition of two key scenes: The actress suggested to filmmakers to get "the business of fashion scene in the movie," which led to two additional scenes. One of them is the one where Miranda explains to Andy how the fashion world is responsible for the creation of her blue cerulean sweater.
"I also wanted...a scene where she is without her armor, the unpeeled scene in the hotel room—just to see that face without it protective glaze, to glimpse the woman in the businesswoman," Streep told Variety.
6. Stanley Tucci almost didn't play Nigel: Frankel told Variety that for months, they couldn't find an actor to play the character, Runway's art director who helps Andy navigate through the world of fashion. He said Tucci accepted the part 72 hours before his character debuted on set.
At a recent appearance at Wizard World Comic Con in Philadelphia, Tucci told fans he was cast in The Devil Wears Prada "at like, the 11th hour."
"I think they scoured the Earth till they came to me," he joked.
7. Meryl Streep says her onscreen character is not based on Anna Wintour: ...despite the fact that Lauren Weisberger, the writer of the 2003 book on which the movie is based, used to work as an assistant to the famous Vogue editor-in-chief.
"The voice I got from Clint Eastwood," Streep told Variety. "He never, ever, ever raises his voice and everyone has to lean in to listen, and he is automatically the most powerful person in the room. But he is not funny. That I stole from [director] Mike Nichols. The way the cruelest cutting remark, if it is delivered with a tiny self-amused curlicue of irony, is the most effective instruction, the most memorable correction, because everyone laughs, even the target."
"The walk, I'm afraid, is mine," she added.