The Devil Wears Prada (with Jameela Jamil)

When director David Frankel signed on to adapt the novel The Devil Wears Prada into a movie, he didn’t realize he’d be up against the real Miranda Priestly herself: Anna Wintour. This week Chris, Lizzie, and very special guest Jameela Jamil discover how it took 5 tries to find the right screenwriter, why Anne Hathaway was the 9th choice to play Andy Sachs, and how fear of retribution from Anna Wintour almost shut the whole thing down. Find out why Meryl Streep went method with her role, how Emily Blunt totally transformed her character, and why a scandal brewing in Anne Hathaway’s personal life bled over onto set. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lizzie Bassett?

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• 0:45Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:04Chris Winterbauer?

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• 1:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone the movie that Damien Chazelle saw and said, "Not my tempo." We're talking about the original whiplash, The Devil Wears Prada, one of my favorite re-watches. As always, I'm Chris Winterbauer, joined by Lizzie Bassett. And Lizzie, who else do we have here today?

• 2:21Lizzie Bassett?

  We have an unbelievably special guest for this episode. I am so excited to talk to her about this. We have actor, writer, advocate, music producer, what can't she do, and host of the podcast Wrong Turns, which I really, really love. It's Jamila Jamil. Thank you so much for being here and welcome.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Hello. Thank you for having me. I love films, so I'm always excited to talk about them.

• 2:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, I think this one is a particularly good fit for several reasons that I can't wait to dive into, but I also just want to say, I really love your podcast so much. You're a very generous host, which I feel like is a rare thing, and you're so funny, but you also just like really clearly make the guests so comfortable and it's very lovely. So go listen to Wrong Turns with Jamila Jamil if you have not yet.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you. And if anyone wants to come see me live in LA, I'm doing my first ever Netflix is a Joke Festival, which is very intimidating as a non-comedian to enter a full-on comedian's festival. But I will have with me Lamorne Morris, the Winston from The New Girl, and I will have Lisa Trager and Chris Fleming, the man of the moment, as my guests.

• 3:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, my god.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  So I'm very excited. So the tickets are available now, but yeah, anyway, if anyone wants to come see it live, it's so much crazier live, even than in the room.

• 3:38Lizzie Bassett?

  That sounds wonderful. All right. Well, so let's just dive right in. How we usually start this is I will ask both of you, and I'll start with you, Jamila, if that's all right.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Had you ever seen The Devil Wears Prada before? And what was your experience on watching it more recently, let's say?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  I have loved that movie since it first came out. I went and saw it in the cinema and loved it so much that I waited till the next showing to watch it all over again because it was such a feast for my little eyes. You know, I think I was much younger. What year did it come out?

• 4:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Two thousand and six.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, two thousand and six, right. So I was, I think, barely twenty and I'd just started working in the fashion industry. So I was really just like soaking it all up. And then it became, even though it is deeply problematic in many ways, it became a sort of comfort rewatch and I will watch it on any flight if it's available and I watch it when I'm sick. It's a go to. I watched it twice over the course of the pandemic. I love showing it to other people. So I think I've seen it probably upwards of twenty five times, which is ridiculous. I think it's probably the movie I've watched the most in the world apart from maybe The Truman Show.

• 4:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, wow. Interesting. Good picks. Chris, what about you?

• 4:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Two thousand and six, I was also getting started in the fashion industry and, but I saw it in two thousand and six and I was an Anne Hathaway fan because I secretly loved The Princess Diaries. I have two sisters and we saw that in theaters. And it was great then and it remains great now. Like you said, it's a time capsule of two thousand and six. Certain lines, you go, oh, oh, oh, wow, you know, and I watched the September issue, the documentary about Anna Wintour and the making of the two thousand and seven, I think, September issue.

• 5:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Is it about Anna Wintour?

• 5:25Chris Winterbauer?

  No, it's really about Grace Cottington.

• 5:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, who's far more interesting.

• 5:28Chris Winterbauer?

  She is. But it's such, like you said, it's a worn blanket movie. It's so snappy and breezy. With the exception, I would say, of any time we go back to her boyfriend and friends, the movie kind of grinds to a halt. But any time that Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, Anne Hathaway, Simon Baker is written as such an asshole, but he's so charming that you kind of just want her to leave Adrian Grenier and just take the Yarlsberg and go and let's go with this creepy older dude. But again, it's like weird peak Girlboss feminism in some ways. It's like Lindy West's new memoir just came out and there are all these articles about the death of millennial feminism. So I thought it was interesting that we're covering this movie. Right now, but I stand by The Devil Wears Prada. It is a great rewatch and it's a very fun movie and we'll talk about all the problematic parts in a bit.

• 6:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I agree. So same as everybody here. I saw this in theaters. I was, I think, 16 years old when this came out. And watching it again for the podcast, I did not realize how much this shaped my psyche as a teenager. And, and we're going to get into this, you know, we keep referencing there are problematic parts of this. The way that the movie deals with Andy's weight is something that-

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Psychotic and illegal, it feels almost.

• 6:37Lizzie Bassett?

  I know, but and it's something I wrestle with every time I watch this movie. But then in researching it, I don't know, it's more complicated than I realized.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  It's very true to the time. Like I was working in the industry. That's what it was like. It would be disingenuous for them to have said or written anything else. And we were, we were still in the throes of size zero.

• 6:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  So.

• 6:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. That line of like, you know, wake up six, it's literally burned in my head. Like I, I remember thinking like, oh, you know, six isn't good enough. I'm a size eight. Like it's, you know, it, well, then not anymore. I've had a baby. But you know, it's like, I didn't understand how much this movie had shaped my perception of what a female body is supposed to look like for better and for worse. That being said, I love this movie. I think that this is an incredible adaptation, as we're going to get into. I'm almost done with the book that it's based on. And they really do a bang up job of making this such a tight, funny movie. I love all of the performances. I'm with you, Chris. I think kind of through no fault of his own. I'm not crazy about Adrian Grenier in this movie.

• 7:43Lizzie Bassett?

  I've always been team Simon Baker.

• 7:45Chris Winterbauer?

  It's just not the most interesting part.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  He is the villain.

• 7:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  He's the fucking villain. And I think that's the craziest thing to me. I think one of the reasons I rewatch it now as an adult is because I'm so happy for my lens to have shifted to understand, A, that Andy is not fat at the start of the movie.

• 8:02Lizzie Bassett?

  No, my god.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  She's not better at the end of the movie because that is what I believed when I was 19 or 20 when I first watched it.

• 8:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  And then I have understood that Meryl Streep's character, whilst being a villain of sorts, is not the villain. It's clearly fucking Adrian Grenier. And I remember being such a young pick me asshole that I was like, I can't believe she's hanging out with her gorgeous boyfriend. And now when I rewatch it, I'm like, he's a fucking cunt who doesn't support her friends and fuck her friends.

• 8:28Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree with you. Fuck her friends.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Who have no empathy for her whatsoever. That moment where they're throwing her phone all around.

• 8:36Lizzie Bassett?

  I would be so mad.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  I would torch them all. I would set fire to that fucking table over that moment.

• 8:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  But he is so self-absorbed. And the idea that she's going to now move, like quit her job, whether or not her job was toxic, quit her life and her trajectory to move to whatever

• 8:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Boston.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  fucking town he's fucking moving to.

• 8:55Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Where he's gonna still make her grilled cheese sandwiches.

• 8:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Which look burned, by the way.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  It's propaganda. Like ultimately, all of Hollywood in that era was propaganda about the crumbs that women should tolerate.

• 9:06Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I think that the changes that they made to that character for the movie are interesting because he is very different in the book.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 9:13Lizzie Bassett?

  He is not a villain in the book at all. He's like kind of a saint. And actually, Andy's a bit more of an asshole, which I almost liked a little bit better, but we'll get into all the differences between the book and the movie. Let's go ahead and dive in. So we always start with the details. The Delaware's Prada is directed by David Frankel. It was produced by Wendy Finerman, who came up in our Forrest Gump episode. She's a badass, especially when it comes to adapting literature. Screenplay by Eileen Brosh McKenna, based on the bestselling novel by Lauren Weisberger. And of course, it stars Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker, Emily Blunt, and Adrian Grenier. It was released June 30th, 2006. And as always, the IMDb logline is,

• 9:56Lizzie Bassett?

  "With an aspiration to become a journalist, Andy, a smart but sensible young graduate, travels to New York. She starts working as an assistant to one of the city's biggest high fashion magazine editors, the cynical Miranda Priestly."

• 10:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Smart but sensible. That's an interesting logline, IMDb.

• 10:14Chris Winterbauer?

  She's not too smart. They want to make it clear. Like, she's not too smart for her own good. She's sensible.

• 10:18Lizzie Bassett?

  She's sensible. Is that their nice way of saying she starts as a size six? All right. So let's begin with the real Andy Sachs, which is Lauren Weisberger, because spoiler alert, if anyone doesn't know, this is a very, very thinly veiled portrayal of Lauren's own time at Vogue. So.

• 10:34Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a Roman aclef. That's what it's called.

• 10:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Roman aclef. Yes, that's the term. Yeah. So she grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a teacher and a mortgage broker. She was also a real smarty pants who graduated with an English Lit degree from Cornell University. And as many recent college grads are wont to do, she went and backpacked around Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, at which point she found herself in need of a job. So she moved to Manhattan, pulled together what I kept seeing referenced as an impressive cover letter, though I could not find it myself to confirm this. And it caught the eye of HR at Conde Nast. And then, bing bang boom, she was hired as an assistant to the one and only editor in chief of Vogue magazine, who is? Anybody?

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Anna Wintour.

• 11:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Anna Wintour. Thank you. Yes. Okay. So Jamila, as certainly the most fashionable person here, could you maybe explain the impact of Anna Wintour, or just like a tiny little bit about who she is?

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Anna Wintour is the editor of American Vogue, but also kind of the leader of Vogue at large globally. Ultimately, I think she has the final say on who gets hired to be editors of other arms of the publication. She decided who our supermodels were. She was instrumental in all of the designers who are big designers, you know, who've entered the lexicon of iconic designers were handpicked by her. She cherry picked the faces and the tailors and the colors of multiple generations of women. And I think also was committed so heavily to the size zero that I would hold her partially responsible for the eating disorder culture of like 30 years of women.

• 12:11Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. She was the editor in chief of Vogue from 1988 to 2025.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  You know what I will say, just quickly, which is problematic of me, is that one thing I've always felt is that how dare all these editors not physically live up to the terrifying standards they are putting out into the world?

• 12:31Chris Winterbauer?

  She does.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  And she.

• 12:32Lizzie Bassett?

  She does. Yeah.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  She is one person who's. Somehow smaller than all of her own models. So she does um walk the walk, not just talk the talk like everyone else. I don't know if that makes it better, but it's comforting to me.

• 12:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Fair enough. She did finally step back at the age of seventy five, but she stepped into a new role as the chief content officer for Conde Nast and global editorial director. So I don't know if we can really call that stepping back. But anyway, it quickly became clear that Lauren, who wanted to be a writer, wasn't going to be doing a whole lot of writing at this job. She was faxing, filing, getting coffee. Now, to be fair, these are all the things that assistants do. We've all done them. I will say in my reading, there's a bit of entitlement in terms of what you think you should be doing at your literal first job out of college, but whatever. But according to another former assistant to Anna Wintour, this is how her assistants duties actually broke down. So she generally had two or three assistants at any time.

• 13:27Lizzie Bassett?

  And Amy Odell's Anna, the biography, explained their responsibilities like this. The first assistant managed the other two assistants and they handled Anna Wintour's schedule. They were her primary point of contact, and this is the only one who got weekends off. The other two assistants, the second assistant, they would deal with caretakers, i.e. nannies, chefs at Wintour's Manhattan and Long Island homes. They would coordinate film screenings and of course, look after her dogs. And then the third assistant would run errands. They pick up theater tickets. They help during Fashion Week. They ordered Anna's clothes directly from designers.

• 14:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Assistant to the regional manager, as it would be known in the office.

• 14:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, exactly. Now, according to Anna, the biography, every new assistant was given a twenty one page instruction manual on how to handle most of their tasks. Workdays started at seven AM and often ran at least twelve hours. And former assistant Meredith Asplund revealed her starting salary was twenty five thousand dollars, while another one of Anna's first ever assistants shared that she lost eight pounds in her first two weeks. Both of those things, by the way, do make it into the book. Now, another former assistant revealed the detail we get in both the book and the movie that Wintour would sometimes address her using the other assistant's name. And another one was, of course, told, you must not leave. Your desk, the desk must not be unmanned at any time. That woman did say this did not come directly from Anna Wintour.

• 14:52Lizzie Bassett?

  It was more sort of lore that like you cannot leave the desk unmanned. I do want to note, this is an unauthorized biography that was made without Anna Wintour's participation, obviously. And Gwyneth Paltrow, who also had an unauthorized biography written by the same author, did say she totally missed everything, the truth of who I am, what my impact is. So I suppose take all of this with a grain of salt, except that it's pretty much confirmed by her former assistants. Now Vogue's managing editor at the time, Lori Jones, gave a different reason for why Lauren didn't get to do any writing in her time at Vogue. She said Lauren was, quote, "a lovely girl, but not a great writer, poor thing."

• 15:32Lizzie Bassett?

  It's so mean.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  That is such expert fashion shade.

• 15:37Lizzie Bassett?

  It's pretty good.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  To couch it in kindness is horrific.

• 15:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, if anybody calls me a poor thing, that's, I'm done. Just take me out.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  It's an amazing shit sandwich.

• 15:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So in 2000, after only 10 months on the job, Lauren did the unthinkable. And she asked Richard Story, who was an editor at Vogue, to take her with him as he was leaving for Departures magazine. He agreed and she went with him. Now, she did do quite a bit of writing at Departures, but it seems that Story thought she could use some writing lessons. Everybody's like, you're not very good at this.

• 16:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, no. She's like, I already went to Cornell. And he's like, you should go back.

• 16:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Do it again. She went and took a creative writing class at night. And as part of her homework, she began writing about her former job at Vogue and more specifically, her very high profile boss. Now, her teacher read this and apparently just saw dollar signs blinking in their eyes because they shared the writing with literary agent Deborah Schneider, whose response to the, at this point, 15 to 20 page, just series of anecdotal stories was, if she wants to sell this book, I can sell it this afternoon. And Deborah was correct. She sold The Devil Wears Prada one week later in May of 2002 for a reported $250,000.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 16:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Did they have the name already? Because one thing I want to mention.

• 16:55Lizzie Bassett?

  The name is so good.

• 16:55Chris Winterbauer?

  This is one of the best titles.

• 16:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Of all time.

• 16:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. It's an amazing title.

• 16:59Lizzie Bassett?

  I think they did.

• 17:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Everybody knows the title. And it's a great poster, too, we should mention, like just that iconic shoe on it. But anyway, it's an amazing title.

• 17:07Lizzie Bassett?

  The cover of the book is great, too. All the marketing around this is really excellent. By the way, a little fun fact, when Anna Wintour was informed about the book and the fact that the quote unquote villain Miranda Priestly was not so loosely based on her, she reportedly said, I cannot remember who that girl is.

• 17:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's the Mad Men.

• 17:24Lizzie Bassett?

  That's the brand.

• 17:25Chris Winterbauer?

  I feel bad for you. I don't think about you at all.

• 17:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Honestly, I believe her. So very shortly after the news of this deal broke, producer Wendy Feinerman, who again, this is the woman who would not give up on Forrest Gump, optioned the film. Now, she had a three-year first look deal with Fox 2000 at this point that began in 1999, so Fox 2000 is where The Devil Wears Prada landed. And when Carla Hacken, then executive VP at Fox 2000, first read Weisberger's manuscript, she said, quote, "I thought Miranda Priestly was one of the greatest villains ever. I remember we went aggressively in and scooped it up." But here's the thing, they did not have a finished novel. They had about 100 pages of a manuscript that were essentially just a setup. According to Feinerman, quote, "It was set, obviously, in the world of fashion, and we all knew what it was, and we all knew the background of the book.

• 18:12Lizzie Bassett?

  We had to wait five or six months to get the other half of the book. We had no idea what happened with the story, but the setup was so great." So Fox 2000 is like, ah, we're just gonna start working on the story anyway, even though they had no idea where the book was gonna go, because they were like, doesn't really matter. But in April of 2003, The Devil Wears Prada hit bookshelves and it absolutely blew up. It spent half the year on the New York Times Bestsellers list, and I can confirm, every teenage girl was reading it, including myself, even though I honestly didn't understand like 90% of what was in it. All the products, the banging olifs and phones, I didn't know what any of this shit was.

• 18:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Jamila, was this on your radar when the book came out, or not until the movie?

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Not at all. No, no, no. When I was at school around this time, I was so head in textbooks that I didn't have time to read anything that wasn't on my curriculum.

• 18:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, good for you.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  But then I watched the movie and then watched it 25 times and never revisited any of those clever books, so.

• 19:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Never read a book again?

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Yep. Left school with very few qualifications and fulfilled zero of my potential. And now if anyone's seen my Substack, the grammar would tell you that I've never been to school a day in my life, so.

• 19:18Lizzie Bassett?

  I refuse to believe that.

• 19:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, all you'd have to do is take a Korean Of writing Night Course like Lauren.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Sure, sure, sure. And I'll write a bestseller.

• 19:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, well, so despite the book's massive cultural impact, there was one person whose feathers were reportedly not at all ruffled. Any guesses who just didn't care at all about this book?

• 19:33Speaker 02

  Anna Wintour.

• 19:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Anna Wintour.

• 19:35Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right, Anna Wintour, of course, Snow Queen Ice Dragon herself.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Did she fuck? I've always thought that was horseshit. Like, I think that it rattled her terribly, but she's from a...

• 19:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Hundred percent.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  You know, there's a very old school British concept of never complain, never explain is the kind of royal families, you know, it's a very like British aristocratic position to take so that you never ever have to clarify or not clarify anything. And it's both a very frustrating way to live, but it's also a much more peaceful way to live because things move on in ambiguity. And, and there's that expression of like, it's better to be considered a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

• 20:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Amazing.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Which is an extraordinary expression that I love so much.

• 20:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, not the way I live my life, unfortunately.

• 20:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I was gonna say from three podcasters.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. All I do is remove, I've been removing all doubt for 17 years straight, you know? So that's sort of my, uh, it's my exact brand, I would say, is just removing all doubt at all times. But I, I think it must have rattled her really badly, but also Meryl Streep turned her into an icon. And

• 20:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  If I may add to that, as I've gotten older, you know, my biggest fear when I was younger is that people would think that I'm difficult and scary because of the color of my skin and because of how outspoken I am, in spite of the fact that I'm actually a softie. I'm considered intimidating, I'm scary to certain people. And as I've gotten older, I've realized that, oh, that is the sweet spot in life is to be a woman who other people fear because people just leave you the fuck alone.

• 21:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, good point.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  And actually, it's more dangerous for them to realize that you're just made of like, you know, I'm like a lint ball, you know, I'm just like putty in the middle.

• 21:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Don't tell them.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  No, I know, it's too late, but it's fine. This community can know, but everyone else on the internet, I prefer that they think I'm crazy and scary. And I can see why.

• 21:19Lizzie Bassett?

  There's a power to it.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  There was a part of her that's like, oh, I sort of win if everyone thinks I'm absolutely terrifying. And so possibly that's also why she never tried to navigate any of this to seem untrue.

• 21:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, and also, look, she's an incredibly successful woman, and that's something we're going to get into. I think the movie does do a very good job of is it makes her far more complicated than she is on the page in the book. And I do think that that's a good thing at the end of the day. According to William Norwich, who is a former Vogue editor and also a New York Post gossip columnist, he said that she just didn't really see herself as a cultural phenomenon and told friends, "I'm so bored by me." What a good statement.

• 22:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Today's episode is sponsored by Mars. You might not realize it, but Mars is behind so many of your favorite Halloween treats. And I'm not just talking about your candy bowl. Yes, Mars makes iconic candies like M&Ms, Snickers, Starburst, my personal favorite, and Skittles. But they also have salty snacks, easy to make meal options, and even treats for your pets. There's something for everyone to enjoy this spooky season. David and I are too old to trick or treat, so we've been getting creative with our Halloween movie night spreads for our friends. I put together a char bootery board with some classic sweets like Rice Krispie treats and peanut butter M&Ms. And because I'm a salty girl, I added some Pringles and my all time favorite snack, Cheez-It crackers. Scary delicious. For Halloween night, I'm making a spooky seven layer dip using Ben's Original Ready Rice because there is nothing that my kid loves more than a rice and bean dip. And don't think I forgot about our dog Q.

• 22:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Mars knows he needs a celebration too, so I put together a special Halloween treat jar packed with Greenie's Original Pumpkin Spice Dental Chews and Pedigree Tasty Biscuits. He's agreed to share with the neighbors because he's a very good boy. Find Mars products in a retailer near you or on Instagram at Mars Global, M-A-R-S-G-L-O-B-A-L, where you can shop everyday favorites and limited time Halloween offerings.

• 23:08Lizzie Bassett?

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• 23:53Lizzie Bassett?

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• 24:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, since the book was pretty much immediately a runaway hit, Fox is like, all right, we got to find a screenwriter, get this thing going. So first up was Peter Hedges. At this point, best known for writing What's Eating Gilbert Grape and About a Boy. Wow. Yeah, I mean Gilbert Grape, not an amazing comp. About a Boy, though, I think actually a pretty good comp for this. And he delivered what everyone seemed to agree was a pretty solid first draft. But he actually quit the project very quickly because he found it way too overwhelming and did not want to be involved in it. Perhaps he was busy raising future film star Lucas Hedges. I didn't realize that that was his dad until I started researching this. But it is, and they look identical. Next up was Howard Michael Gould, who was mostly a sitcom writer, and then Paul Rudnick, who had written Addams Family Values.

• 25:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Lot of guys.

• 25:33Lizzie Bassett?

  I was gonna say. Well, we're not done with the men.

• 25:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay.

• 25:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Rudnick was only available for two weeks. He did a pass just on Miranda Priestly's dialogue. And then came Don Roos. And yeah, what's, what's the theme? Amongst these four writers.

• 25:47Chris Winterbauer?

  They're just like, I don't know what's not working. Let's just try some more dudes.

• 25:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Let's hire more men, men, men, men. Yeah, that is so bizarre to me. Like, this is a story where almost every major character is a woman. You've exclusively hired men to write the screenplay.

• 26:03Chris Winterbauer?

  And probably men, you know, who, like me, find, there's a great quote in September issue. Anna Wintour says, there's something about fashion that can make people very nervous. I'm guessing all of these men were made very nervous by fashion, you know, as I am. And yeah, doesn't seem like the right fit.

• 26:19Lizzie Bassett?

  That's spot on because apparently they had turned this into basically like a Zoolander-esque skewering of the fashion world, which to your point, I think that's what you do if you don't A, care about it and B, like, understand.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Understand it, yeah.

• 26:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. So in fairness to these folks, there were a few big problems with adapting the book. First, it's basically just a series of anecdotes. Like, there really is not a strong narrative through line pushing you towards a climax at all in this. I've been rereading it, I'm not totally done with it, but like, it's a bit strange. It's, the structure is weird. It almost kind of loops back on itself over and over again. It's just sort of these like series of vignettes of her life with her boss. And then it'll like start in one place and then kind of jump back to explain like how she got to this kind of, you know, the worst part of her day, just over and over and over again. And it really doesn't have like any kind of driving narrative to it. So that is a pretty big challenge for this movie.

• 27:15Lizzie Bassett?

  There also is not a strong third act at all. According to Elizabeth Gabler, then president of Fox 2000, quote, "Getting that third act narrative was one of the biggest challenges of my job ever. We had all these plot points that were carryovers from the book, so there were external reasons for Andy to make a decision whether she wanted to keep her job because Miranda's threat was, if you leave, you don't have your job anymore. Servicing those subplots was crippling, and it was liberating to finally say, let's not make it about that, let's make it about her decision." Which I think is a very smart change they make for the movie. So obviously, they had a lot to fix in order to make it a successful movie and nobody had really nailed it yet. And meanwhile, the studio was hunting for a director and they really wanted someone with a ton. A very broad, like sitcom style comedy experience,

• 27:59Lizzie Bassett?

  which I think gives you a clue as to what those early iterations of the screenplay might have been like. This did make David Frankel a pretty weird fit. He'd only directed one feature at that point and was much better known for his work directing episodes of Band of Brothers, Sex and the City and Entourage. Although, to me, someone who's directed Sex and the City and Entourage-

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Sex and the City is a perfect fit.

• 28:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly. It is a perfect fit.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Also explains how Adrian Grenier got into this film.

• 28:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it does indeed.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  You know, I don't think his career's ever really recovered because of how much we all started to hate him on like the second or third watch.

• 28:32Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  And he's just an actor.

• 28:34Lizzie Bassett?

  I think it's unfair.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Like, we forever saw him as this motherfucker from that film.

• 28:40Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  And I don't think he ever got it back.

• 28:42Lizzie Bassett?

  No, between this and Entourage, which he's actually, he does a good job in both.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  He's fantastic.

• 28:47Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't think anyone made it out of Entourage Alive, if you look at that cast.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, true.

• 28:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, you're right. I guess they didn't. But it turns out Wendy Feinerman had had her eye on David Frankel for a pretty long time. And even though he didn't really have a ton of experience with what broad comedy or fashion, he was intrigued and he agreed to a call with Feinerman. And he's like, oh, I should probably read the book and I guess read the script before this call. So he did that and then promptly went into a panic spiral, saying, quote, "Four very talented writers have been working for a couple of years adapting it. Having read the book, there were moments of more honesty and emotion in some of the scenes, which their movie turned into campy satire. So I bailed on the call with Wendy and abandoned the meeting." And then he said this, "Miranda was a witch and Andy's motivation was to get her revenge. There was a lot of conflict that ended with Miranda being humiliated. I felt that wasn't satisfying. My view was that we should be grateful for excellence.

• 29:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Why do the excellent people have to be nice?" I love that. I think that is such a smart take.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  That's very interesting.

• 29:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So 10 days later, his agent called him up and was like, hey, did you like the script? And he's like, no, I absolutely did not. And his agent kindly explained to him, okay, this is what directors do. Find a germ, a nugget of something that appeals to you the first time through, and then your job is to shape it into the movie that you love. And he's like, oh, okay.

• 30:05Lizzie Bassett?

  So he goes ahead, meets with Wendy and then uses the entire meeting to tell her everything he didn't like about the script and how he would fix it. He said he wanted to celebrate Miranda just as much as expose her and turn this into a real coming of age story for Andy. It's about learning to be great at something. This worked and with some help from Wendy, Frankel sold Fox on his vision for the film and he was hired. But this was basically an entirely different movie than what they had on paper. So they decided to find another screenwriter to start completely from scratch. And this time they had a novel thought. Any guesses what was different about this screenwriter?

• 30:37Speaker 02

  A woman, perhaps?

• 30:38Lizzie Bassett?

  A woman! It's a lady. We did it, Joe. So in Thanksgiving of 2004, the relatively unknown Aileen Brosh McKenna was hired and she immediately clicked with Frankel's vision for the film. And it was very personal for her. According to McKenna, who'd grown up in New Jersey, quote, "Nigel's speech about how it's a beacon of hope that he read under the covers with flashlight. I wrote that as an homage to all of us for whom those fashion magazines were a peek into this world. There was no internet, so it was really hard to access that sense of what it meant to trot around the globe. Fashion magazines were very important for widening your horizons." I agree. As a little kid in Richmond, Virginia, I love reading fashion magazines. It really was so different before the internet was around. But producers were very eager to get the show on the road and so she turned in her

• 31:22Lizzie Bassett?

  first draft in one month. Chris, you're a screenwriter. What's the fastest you've ever turned in a draft?

• 31:29Chris Winterbauer?

  I technically had to do one a little faster than that and I would never recommend it.

• 31:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, wow. Humble brag.

• 31:34Chris Winterbauer?

  No, she did more changes, obviously. I did a, it was like a light polish on something in a couple of weeks.

• 31:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 31:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Considering what she did, that's crazy.

• 31:42Lizzie Bassett?

  She rewrote the whole thing.

• 31:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, like normally eight to 10 weeks would be much more normal. That would still be quick.

• 31:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow, okay. Something interesting that McKenna did was she made a point not to research Anna Wintour and instead chose to treat the Miranda Priestly in the book as just that, Miranda Priestly. This is so smart, also because the book is so detailed. Like, it is basically just a transcription of everything that happened in that office down to the letter. Couple of interesting things that did get lost in the book to screen adaptation that I do want to call out, though. Andy Sachs is very excited. explicitly Jewish in the book, as is Miranda Priestly. There is a whole big reveal about Miranda's background that she grew up in a very poor Orthodox Jewish family in London. I do think it's interesting that they erase basically any ethnicity from the movie in several roles. This is one of those cases. Nigel is the other.

• 32:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Is Anna Wintour Jewish?

• 32:34Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 32:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, because wasn't her dad the editor of the London Evening Standard?

• 32:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, yeah.

• 32:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  I think that's probably why, in order to.

• 32:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 32:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, that's a good point, to tie it more closely to her.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Although she's not British, Meryl Streep is not British in the movie, which I do think is interesting.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, but she's got that same accent.

• 32:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Mid-Atlantic. Yes, I agree.

• 32:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 32:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Because Wintour doesn't sound always fully British to me either.

• 32:55Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 32:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, when I listen to her.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, they sound like WASP-y New Yorkers.

• 32:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, true. Couple other little tiny details. She's from Connecticut in the book. She went to Brown, not Northwestern. Her boyfriend is Alex, not Nate. He's very different. He is a schoolteacher for underprivileged children, although I will say the book handles that in a very ham-fisted, early aughts way in terms of who the underprivileged children are. And he is sort of unendingly supportive of her. She is a lot less likable. Like, the quibbles that he has with her in the book are extremely reasonable. And she really does treat him like shit. So it is interesting to me that they flipped that. She also has a much stronger personality in the book, which I kind of didn't mind. Now, while the movie may have softened Andy's edges, it did harden those of the people around her.

• 33:40Lizzie Bassett?

  McKenna said she pulled insult inspiration from Don Rickles to come up with some of Miranda and Emily's lines. And she actually did speak to one insider at Vogue who read the script and said everyone was way too nice. So she did a pass punching up all of the insults. And also changed Nigel, who is a composite kind of of two characters in the book, but ends up being essentially a whitewashing of the real Andre Leon Tally.

• 34:03Chris Winterbauer?

  That's who I was wondering in the September issue. That's kind of who I thought it might be.

• 34:06Lizzie Bassett?

  It's absolutely him. They turn him from a sort of warm, friendly mentor into a, quote, "mean mentor", the mentor who tells Andy what she's really doing wrong. It's an important thing in your twenties to recognize when you're failing.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  I know, but Stanley Tucci's delivery of it is just still so warm. He just can't be mean in anything.

• 34:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 34:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Who I feel like if they were going to do more of an Andre Leon tally, I just thought of Titus Burgess immediately.

• 34:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Oh, my god, yes.

• 34:33Chris Winterbauer?

  He would be so good in that role.

• 34:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so good.

• 34:35Lizzie Bassett?

  He would be great.

• 34:36Chris Winterbauer?

  If they ever did a more true to life version, maybe.

• 34:39Lizzie Bassett?

  If they do a Broadway version of Devil Wears Prada, they better hire him.

• 34:42Chris Winterbauer?

  And let him sing.

• 34:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Absolutely. So you may have noticed that I said she spoke to one insider, and that's because it proved very difficult to get anyone from the fashion industry to talk to her about this movie. Yeah, because Anna Wintour scared the shit out of everyone. There were rumors that she had waged a campaign against Robert Altman's film Prete Porte back in the 90s, and that she'd been speed dialing designers to tell them not to participate in The Devil Wears Prada. Of course, Vogue denied this. They were like, no, obviously not. No calls were made. There will be no retribution if anyone wants to participate. Now, all right, I want to go back to the insults, and I want to talk about one particular insult that McKenna added to the film, which is, take a chance. Hire the smart fat girl.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I will never not laugh at this line. Obviously, it is absurd because Anne Hathaway is gorgeous and not even remotely fat.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  But I do feel as though that is a nod to how insane it is. I don't think they mean it. I feel the way that they cut immediately to Anne Hathaway's face being like, what in the fuck are you saying? I think that was a really important moment of stepping outside of the industry, being like, this shit is bullshit. That's just what I took from it.

• 35:49Lizzie Bassett?

  That's exactly right. And the the screenwriter said this herself. She said, "One of the things that's very palpable about fashion is that it's very hard to be overweight. It's a world where being thin is prized, partly because of the sample sizes floating around. I thought that her describing Andy as a fat person says a lot about the values of that world, where anyplace else, Andy would be considered incredibly skinny."

• 36:07Chris Winterbauer?

  It's also pretty different from, I was thinking of Love Actually, the

• 36:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, my god.

• 36:12Chris Winterbauer?

  The woman who works in the prime minister's office. Where everyone just relentlessly describes herself.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Talks about her huge thighs.

• 36:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Her huge thighs and huge butt.

• 36:21Lizzie Bassett?

  And she's gorgeous. Yeah, that one is crazy.

• 36:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Candidly, like, her physique would be quite prized, right, now culturally.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Well, maybe two years ago, but yeah.

• 36:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, sure.

• 36:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, I'm a little behind the times, so cut me some slack.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  2024, let's. Let's fucking go, Martine McCutcheon. But 2026, we're right back to the Devil Wears Prada. It's actually perfect timing for the second one to be coming out as we have circled right back around culturally to the Ozempic era supersized.

• 36:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah, that's true.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Zero vibes.

• 36:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, we're going to talk a little bit more about that as it pertains to the Devil Wears Prada 2 at the end of this. But the reason I'm calling out this moment is because I agree with you, Jamila. This one works for me.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  This one felt like it was for us. That was the one vibe that felt that it was for us to show how insane this is. Yeah.

• 37:04Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree, but here's my main problem with the way that the movie handles this. Is that Anne Hathaway, by her own admission, did have to lose quite a bit of weight for the role. So much so that they had to add a prosthetic butt pad to her during this whole size six setup that, of course, they would later remove when she's championed for getting down to a size four.

• 37:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, I was gonna say she arcs toward a four, which is.

• 37:28Lizzie Bassett?

  That's what bothers me.

• 37:29Chris Winterbauer?

  It undercuts everything.

• 37:30Lizzie Bassett?

  It does. I don't know why they did that because it's not celebrated in the same way in the book at all. I think that was a mistake. I get what they're trying to do, and I believe that they thought that they were saying something different than the way that I think it actually comes across.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  No, I think it was a combination of both. I think that one moment that we were celebrating showed situational awareness. And I do agree that, to an extent, they're just telling it how it really was in the fashion industry. But I also think that it was hyper-normalized to see weight loss as part of a transformation in a woman that we would glorify. You know, it wasn't weird back then. You know, that line, "I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight," that Emily Blunt says, I think, when they're going up the stairs. I literally haven't seen this film in a year, but this is how many times I've seen this fucking movie. But as she's saying that, like, that sentence alone entered the lexicon where, until COVID, for the 20 years that film had been out, almost, or like 16 years that film had been out,

• 38:31Speaker 02

  anytime I got sick, my girlfriends wanted to come over to try and get what I had because they'd be jealous that I was gonna lose weight and they wanted to lose weight because it felt like fat camp. You know, free fat camp is to get really sick. Yeah.

• 38:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Tell them just put their kid in daycare. You'll be fine.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  Exactly. But that's what, that's what 20 year olds were like after that moment. Like that moment normalized like thinness at all costs. And it's cemented into our generation that thinness equals success, thinness equals acceptance. Thinness means you get to dress better. It's like she could have dressed amazingly in all of those same outfits at the size fucking six or eight or 10 or whatever, and she would have looked amazing.

• 39:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  But it was a subliminal message dropped in and that was the values of the time. That was the values of Hollywood for sure. You know, they would have unbelievably thin women and she would eat a tub of ice cream in the movie. And, and the men would be joking about what a fat pig she was, you know? It was an insane time. So I, I don't want to say that we just misinterpreted it.

• 39:30Lizzie Bassett?

  No, no, no. I think you're right. I think that this movie, this is my one, honestly, one quibble with this movie is it does quite a bit of have your cake and eat it too, or don't eat it, I suppose with this. And, you know, Anne Hathaway said in an interview around the time this came out that she and Emily Blunt would like clutch at each other and cry because they were so hungry, because they had lost so much weight during this. By the way, that article has been scrubbed, but I found it.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Well done, Wayback Machine. Let's go.

• 39:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Wayback Machine. Yes, I pulled a lot from the Wayback Machine for this because much of it had been scrubbed. So also Anne Hathaway famously took her butt pad home and had it framed with Andy's ass written underneath it, which is kind of funny, but also makes me a little sad.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Devastating. Yeah.

• 40:09Lizzie Bassett?

  So since we're talking about our stars, let's go ahead and dive into casting. And it seems that they did start with Miranda, so we will too. Meryl Streep is like kind of the reason this movie got made. The film was not even officially greenlit until Tom Rothman secured Meryl Streep for the role in 2005. And the early 2000s were a pretty fun and interesting time for Meryl. She had kind of started to take some steps away from her more serious roles. It had brought her an Oscar nomination for her part in Spike Jonze's adaptation, which I love so much. She does deliver one of my favorite lines in the entire movie. Chris, do you remember?

• 40:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Which one?

• 40:45Lizzie Bassett?

  It's what she screams at the end. You've ruined my life, you fat fuck.

• 40:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 40:51Lizzie Bassett?

  I just want to be. A baby again. I want to be a baby. She's so good. She'd also appeared in Lemonyn Snicket's series of unfortunate events. Yeah, I forgot about that. She was kind of just looking for more fun roles and it really was not about making money. She was just like, she's like, I've done the serious stuff. I'm out to have some fun now.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  I also feel like she was an unbelievably beautiful woman who was

• 41:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Always disowned by the fashion industry. She was always someone who no one took any interest in what she wore. No one took any interest in how beautiful she was.

• 41:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Which is crazy.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  Theme throughout her youthful interviews of how unattractive she was, you know, made to feel by people because she had that beautiful, long nose. And she was told, you know, you need to look more like an all American girl to be successful. You'll never be. She was so discouraged at the start of her career. And then throughout her career, she was a bit like Emma Thompson, another gorgeous woman.

• 41:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Who was just treated as if you're like, oh, you're not really in with the in crowd. She was one of the least celebrated superstar women. And so I imagine this is also like quite a fun little fuck you

• 41:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  To an industry that largely shunned her, even though she added so much value and worth to any of the bullshit they were doing.

• 41:58Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. And also I think about her in like Kramer versus Kramer and she is

• 42:02Speaker 02

  My god.

• 42:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Stunning.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  The most beautiful.

• 42:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Stunning.

• 42:05Chris Winterbauer?

  We need to cover that. That was a tough.

• 42:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Fine.

• 42:07Chris Winterbauer?

  She did not have a good time working with Dustin Hoffman on that movie.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  No, that slap, Jesus Christ.

• 42:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 42:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 42:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Dustin Hoffman. Mm hmm. We'll get there. Now, according to Entertainment Weekly, Michelle Pfeiffer, Glenn Close and Catherine Zeta-Jones were all considered for the role. I could see Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer. I don't really see Catherine Zeta-Jones the same way.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Too young. That's ridiculous.

• 42:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, that's true. That's true.

• 42:28Chris Winterbauer?

  She had just done like Intolerable Cruelty. She would have been way too young.

• 42:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think she looks right at all for that. But Carla Hackett and Wendy Feinerman were both on the Merrill or bust train from the beginning. However, not everyone shared their confidence. Feinerman revealed that Streep was almost passed over because of doubts as to whether or not she could be funny. That's crazy to me. She just did adaptation, which truly she made me laugh out loud so many times in that.

• 42:52Chris Winterbauer?

  It is a different type of humor, but I wouldn't necessarily look at Close and Pfeiffer any differently, is my point.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 42:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Uh, Pfeiffer maybe because of like

• 43:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Batman?

• 43:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 43:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, that's fair.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Maybe it still wasn't like comedy comedy. This is sitcom comedy, you know, that they were looking for. And I think it's maybe not just that they don't know if she can do it. It's also that they imagine that if people see that it's a Meryl Streep movie, they'll imagine it's a very serious, Oscar-worthy, gravitas-laden film.

• 43:19Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true, but of course, it does end up getting her an Oscar nomination. But she got along great with David Frankel, who said, quote, "When I met Meryl, we talked about what would you sacrifice to be excellent." She also wanted to make a movie that at least mocked the tyranny of the thin. Now, I want to say, I very much get the impression that Meryl was more on the side of mocking this than kind of anyone else making the movie.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  She was very angry behind the scenes. She was always trying to encourage Anne Hathaway to eat.

• 43:45Lizzie Bassett?

  To not lose weight, yes. Yeah, she vocally was like, "You don't need to be doing this." But of course, she did, because they were telling her to. More on that in a few minutes.

• 43:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, Lizzie, it does remind me of the Grace Cottington moment in the September issue, when she was looking at the photo of the cameraman. And they said they were gonna basically Photoshop out his belly.

• 44:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, and she's like, "I don't want you to do that."

• 44:05Chris Winterbauer?

  They're like, "Don't do that. I want you to look like a person." Like, people should look like people. Not everybody needs to look like models. It was a very interesting moment behind the scenes.

• 44:13Lizzie Bassett?

  She's fascinating. I really, I could have watched three more hours of Grace Cottington.

• 44:18Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree.

• 44:18Lizzie Bassett?

  If you all haven't watched the September issue, it is streaming on Prime right now, and I highly recommend it. It's a nice little companion piece, The Devil Wears Prada. And they do something very smart, which by the end of it, it really is more about Grace Cottington and a little bit Andre Leon Tally, although not as much about him, than it is about Anna Wintour. And I think that's because they realized that they're both more interesting than Anna Wintour.

• 44:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Wintour is pretty flat. She's pretty inaccessible.

• 44:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, she does not let you in.

• 44:47Speaker 03

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• 45:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Meryl did have a few conditions that had to be met before she would officially sign on. She insisted on a business of fashion scene. This became the Cerulean sweater scene. She wanted it to be taken seriously and explain how it impacts daily life. By the way, little fun fact on that Cerulean sweater monologue, it's completely made up. Most of the detail was just invented by McKenna because it sounded real. And then the second thing that she required was the scene where Miranda appears completely makeup and fashion free in the hotel room where she tells Andy about her divorce. She said, "We have to see Miranda without her, quote, 'protective glaze.'" These are such smart additions, like kind of essential additions, I think, to this movie.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Two of my favorite parts of the film.

• 46:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, two of the most iconic parts of the movie.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  She's such a producer, isn't she?

• 46:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Mm-hmm. She's so smart. She also required a lot more money than they initially offered, to which I say, "Good for you, Meryl." She said, "The offer was, to my mind, if not insulting, not perhaps reflective of my actual value to the project."

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 46:20Lizzie Bassett?

  "There was my goodbye moment, and then they doubled the offer. I was 55 and I had just learned at a very late date how to deal on my own behalf." She made somewhere between $4 and $5 million for the role. Good for you.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  She is the movie. She makes the movie.

• 46:35Lizzie Bassett?

  She does. Yeah, 100% she is the movie. This may be hard to fathom, but Adrian Grenier was one of the biggest stars in the cast at this time. He was peak entourage fame. And so when he was cast as Nate, that was another big boon to the movie. Simon Baker, on the other hand, he's a few years away from The Mentalist at this point. And so he actually was not a big name at all. He'd had some small but recognizable roles across American and Australian film and TV. By no means was he a star. I love Simon Baker, and I'm totally with you. Every time I watch this, I'm like, "My God, leave him. Go with Christian. Good Lord."

• 47:07Speaker 02

  I hate Christian. I'm so surprised.

• 47:09Lizzie Bassett?

  You do? You do? Really?

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Why?

• 47:12Chris Winterbauer?

  I hate the way he's written. I just find him very charming.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  I want to get her like a good vibrator and get her away from both of these men. I found him dripping with sleaze.

• 47:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, he is?

• 47:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he is. But like, I guess, am I totally off base?

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Maybe that's your thing. I, like, for me, that's like, I think I hate smooth people. So I think that's probably, I just don't trust anyone who isn't like fallible and awkward.

• 47:36Lizzie Bassett?

  That's fair.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  So I think that's probably just my personal taste where I was like, neither of these men suit this woman.

• 47:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, no.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  At all. And he just like seemed like he has a date rape drug, you know, in his pocket. But that's just my, that's my personal feeling. Sorry. Sorry.

• 47:48Lizzie Bassett?

  I could see it. I guess maybe it's my love of Simon Baker in general that is bleeding through because I find him very charming. But I will say upon this re-watch, I didn't find anything that Christian did particularly bad. I don't know.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  He's fine.

• 48:02Lizzie Bassett?

  What does he do that's so bad? He's, I mean.

• 48:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I feel like they're real, he's dangling the professional connections, like, you know, to try to get the sex from her.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's definitely got a casting couch.

• 48:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, totally.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Like, he knows she's got a boyfriend. He knows she's like inappropriately young for him.

• 48:20Chris Winterbauer?

  He's an incredibly sleazy.

• 48:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, I'm wrong. I'll crawl back into my hole.

• 48:25Chris Winterbauer?

  No, no, no. Here's where I agree. He's an incredibly sleazy character. I still find Simon Baker very charming.

• 48:30Lizzie Bassett?

  He is.

• 48:31Chris Winterbauer?

  And I think he does a great American accent.

• 48:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, go see Land of the Dead. He's very good as the lead of that movie.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Totally. No disrespect to the actor, but it's just like, he's inappropriately older than her.

• 48:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Super inappropriate.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  She's clearly in awe of him. It's a total abuse of power and experience.

• 48:47Lizzie Bassett?

  My 16-year-old brain was like, that's the good one.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  I know, but like, what were our options back then? Do you know what I mean?

• 48:53Lizzie Bassett?

  That's what I'm saying. I just find Adrian Greenway so unattractive, poor man.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  You know, it was that or Paul Blart Mall Cop. You know, we were told it's one of these two or Paul Blart Mall Cop. Like, we weren't given any, like, middle ground of someone.

• 49:05Chris Winterbauer?

  It's either Seth Rogen in Knocked Up, or this is the villain.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Exactly. And all the men who were kind and good and emotionally intelligent were put in a sweater vest and marketed as the weak beta.

• 49:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Soy cuck that the woman always passes over for the bad boy in the leather jacket.

• 49:20Chris Winterbauer?

  We didn't have those words yet, though.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  No.

• 49:22Chris Winterbauer?

  That is true.

• 49:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Soy boy is my favorite metosphere term. It makes me laugh every time I hear it.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  It's so ridiculous, but back then, you know, those were the, you know, we were given stereotype options of men who are mentally and emotionally unavailable and manipulative. And we were told to go after him and save him and fix him. And we were never told to go with someone nice who cared about us and our dreams.

• 49:42Lizzie Bassett?

  No, no, no.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  And I feel as though this just was a continuation of that.

• 49:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Absolutely.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Fucking horseshit. But anyway, as you were.

• 49:47Lizzie Bassett?

  So the part of Emily was particularly difficult to cast and Frankel saw over a hundred actresses for the part. None of them were right. Now Emily Blunt had mostly acted in TV movies at this point, but she was on the Fox lot at the time because she was deep in callbacks for Aragon.

• 50:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh.

• 50:02Lizzie Bassett?

  But yeah, it turns out in one of the meetings she took on the lot, a casting associate asked her to read for The Devil Wears Prada and she was running late. She's trying to make a flight. She had on sweatpants, so she's just like, whatever. And she read the sides very flustered, very fast in a British accent. Frankel saw this tape and he was like, that's my Emily. I love her. I want her exactly like this. But he actually had to wait for Aragon to pass on her because that's the part she wanted and that was the higher profile film. They finally did pass on her and he called her house in England, got her mother, who informed him that she was out getting very plastered with her sister, sad to have lost the Aragon role, and told him to call her cellphone. And he did and he reached her in the bathroom of a dive bar in London where he said, listen, I would love to cast you off the tape, but the studio wants to see you one more time. So can you do what you did, but dress the

• 50:47Lizzie Bassett?

  part more? And so she did one more screen test and she got the part. And it is worth mentioning, the character Emily in the book is potentially the most different from book to screen and that has everything to do with Emily Blunt because she and McKenna literally went in and rewrote that character. They added all of those funny lines, the Britishisms. And Blunt said she took some info from people in the real world saying, quote, "I saw a mother speaking to her child in a supermarket when we were shooting that film. It's a line that gets quoted back to me now. She yelled at her kid and she kind of opened and closed her hand and she goes, yeah, I'm hearing this and I want to hear this. I went and put it in the movie."

• 51:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Poor kid.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  She stole the film.

• 51:27Lizzie Bassett?

  A hundred percent. She steals this movie.

• 51:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Stole the movie. I think she's why I re-watch it.

• 51:32Lizzie Bassett?

  She's so funny.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  Obviously Anne Hathaway's a delight, but I watched the movie for Emily Blunt for just those little just bite sized moments of her utter unapologetic villain vibes and just the way she eats that chocolate pot in the hospital because she hasn't eaten in so long that this disgusting hospital prison food tastes so amazing to her and she's like licking, licking, licking the- Lid or whatever. I, I just thought she humanized such a nightmarish role so brilliantly. I remember just thinking, who the fuck is that? And she's why I watched it again that day in the cinema. That was it for me. I was just like, me and John Krasinski both were just like, that's it. I'm in love with her. That's my woman. I'm gonna watch her and support her in everything she does forever.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  But she made that fucking movie.

• 52:21Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree with you. She makes me laugh out loud more than anybody else in this movie.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:27Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. Now, before we get to our final piece of the puzzle, I want to talk about the casting of Nigel, because there's a little bit of scandal around it. So before Stanley Tucci was attached, the production did a round of auditions, but not with actors. They auditioned several real life fashion industry people, including Simon Doonan, the former creative director of Barney's New York. And here's how Doonan said his audition went. Quote, "After I delivered my lines, Mr. Frankel asked me about various people at Vogue, including Miss Wintour. When I told him that the editor in chief was straightforward, highly professional, an incredible mother, and extremely well liked by her staff, in sharp contrast to Miss Weisberger's implied portrait, he glazed over." Soon Doonan realized that celebrity stylists Robert Verdi and Philip Block had also been asked to audition. But mere days after Doonan had read for Frankel, Stanley Tucci was announced as playing Nigel.

• 53:12Lizzie Bassett?

  So here's what Doonan said publicly about this. Quote, "This whole charade, I theorized, was nothing more than a carefully orchestrated piece of unpaid research."

• 53:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, try to get them on camera talking about Anna Wintour.

• 53:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. He said, "We gays had been dragged in to swish it up on film, no less, for the delectation of some precast, overpaid, straight actor." This thespian would then fashion his characterization from our mincings.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  You know what? That's happened to me before.

• 53:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Really?

• 53:40Speaker 02

  When I was doing an audition for a movie that I think was with Jennifer Garner. A few years ago, the casting director asked me all these private questions about Kristen Bell and clearly like had it in for Kristen Bell and was like, "Do you think she would have been more successful had she been prettier?" And I was like, "I what?" She's very good looking and she's also really fucking successful. She's a household name around the world. I think she's fine.

• 54:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I think she's doing fine.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  She's doing great and she looks great. And she asked me all these private questions about like Kristen's marriage to Dax and

• 54:11Lizzie Bassett?

  What?

• 54:12Speaker 02

  And and I was like, oh shit, you have a problem personally with Kristen Bell. And because I'm in a show where I spend all day with her, you've only brought me in to try and get shit from me about Kristen, which I would never do. And it was in between two scenes. And so in the next scene, I have to die, which is already humiliating to pretend to be shot in like mime.

• 54:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, no.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Up against a wall. And I'd never done a death scene before because it was like my second ever audition of like The Good Place was my first ever audition. This was like my second ever audition. And I was having to do, you know, drama, you know, I didn't, which I didn't know how to do. And she was so angry with me because I wouldn't give her a single nugget about Kristen Bell that then she like was just like read the sides like, yeah, and then bang, you've been shot. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And didn't even look at me and just, I left the room and I never heard anything back. And I was like, you motherfucker. These fuckers, this industry.

• 55:06Lizzie Bassett?

  That's bizarre. What are you doing with that information? It's just like your own personal.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  The cameras on.

• 55:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Does she have a Kristen Bell voodoo doll?

• 55:12Speaker 02

  I had no idea, but she was obsessed and I didn't give her anything.

• 55:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  And I didn't get the job, but like fuck working with someone like that.

• 55:20Lizzie Bassett?

  So tell me, what's Kristen really like?

• 55:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, if it makes you feel any better, my daughter may or may not be at least partially named after Eleanor Shelstrom.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  Oh, perfect.

• 55:29Chris Winterbauer?

  From The Good Place.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Great.

• 55:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, well, so Stanley Tucci came out and he was like, no, he said, I don't know why someone would write such a piece. They really did not know what they wanted to do with this part. I think he's imagining a much more Machiavellian scenario than actually exists. All I know is someone called me and I realized this was a great part. Initially, I thought, oh, okay, I believe Stanley Tucci. But the more I started thinking about it, I kind of believe Simon Doonan.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  Who's to say? It's totally, both options are totally possible, but I think Simon's one is more plausible, given the nature of Hollywood.

• 56:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 56:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, is there a version where Tucci's unaware of it?

• 56:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 56:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Frankel has used the information, right?

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 56:07Chris Winterbauer?

  To inform the way he's going to direct him.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  Well, Tucci is also the salt of the earth. Like he, I couldn't watch a movie where he played a pedophile or a rapist or something because I was like.

• 56:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, the lovely.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  He's gonna make me fucking like, he's gonna make me, yeah, he's gonna make me sympathize.

• 56:20Lizzie Bassett?

  It's rough.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Because he's just so lovely that it's so impossible to hate him that I was like, I can't watch anything where he's actually a villain, otherwise I'll sympathize with a villain. So I have to avoid whenever he takes a dark turn because it'll do something weird to me. I'm just, I ride at dawn for Stanley Tucci.

• 56:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Of course, we all, we all do.

• 56:37Chris Winterbauer?

  My secret pitch for that movie is they should have flipped the casting between Stanley Tucci and Mark Wahlberg.

• 56:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, god. I don't want to see Mark Wahlberg play a murdering pedophile either. That's scary for different reasons, but yes. So it is interesting, though, because Tucci was apparently cast a couple of weeks into shooting, and he actually accepted the role a few days before they started filming him. So it does seem like maybe they had a hard time filling this role. Perhaps they were casting a wide net. They went to, you know, real people in the fashion industry, who knows?

• 57:05Speaker 02

  He's also straight, playing gay.

• 57:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he is. I think that was Simon's point about him being able to watch them on camera, which is a valid point.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:14Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, step aside half the haters, it's time to talk about Andy Sachs. So Anne Hathaway was not the first choice to play Andy, nor was she the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth. She was the ninth choice for this role. Any guesses who the studio's top choice was? Huge star at the time, coming in hot off of Mean Girls? The Notebook?

• 57:34Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, no way.

• 57:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Rachel McAdams.

• 57:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Rachel McAdams.

• 57:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Who would be in an Aileen Brosh McKenna script mourning Gloria a few years later?

• 57:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, they were desperate for her. So she was actually filming The Family Stone on the Fox lot at the time, and they offered her-

• 57:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Love The Family Stone.

• 57:52Lizzie Bassett?

  It's great, it's great.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  Incredible Christmas movie.

• 57:54Lizzie Bassett?

  They offered her this role three times, and she kept saying no. She did not want to do more commercial work at this point. And Frankel said, you know, at the time, it would be easy to perceive the movie as kind of a simplistic Cinderella tale, and she wanted to do more sophisticated work than that. Also, like, we don't know where the script was at this point. It's quite possible she was reading earlier iterations.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  By the way, it's not a great showcase of acting talent, that film. And that's not to discredit Anne Hathaway, who I think is a phenomenon of our generation.

• 58:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, that's the least interesting part in the whole movie.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  But it's the least interesting part in the whole movie. There's no real acting chops, other than- Like a bit of frustration or a bit of tension about, you know, like a bit of stress. Really, it's a fluff role where you are playing the exposition lead.

• 58:36Chris Winterbauer?

  You're the straight man to everybody else.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  Colorful and the storyline happens everywhere apart from really you.

• 58:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, you're the audience's point of entry into a very weird world.

• 58:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Which is hard. That's also a hard job.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  It's totally a hard job.

• 58:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Does it incredibly well, but it's not a fun job.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not a job that like I think any actor would be like, oh, this is going to make a real impact. However, the commercial success of that movie made Anne Hathaway a bona fide A-list superstar faster than Rachel McAdams.

• 59:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Well.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Well, no, I guess The Notebook was the biggest film in the world. So I guess maybe she also didn't need it as much as Anne Hathaway needed it. This graduated Anne Hathaway into like, I'm an adult making real blockbuster movies.

• 59:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally. So other actresses considered before Anne were Kirsten Dunst, Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, and Kate Hudson. And Kate Hudson has openly said that she regrets not taking the role. She apparently really only turned it down because of a scheduling conflict.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  Kate would have been phenomenal.

• 59:28Lizzie Bassett?

  She would have been great. Any of those would have been great.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  Nah, I mean, a lot of them are just like, no, they're great, but there's just like, they're, they're very serious and very grounded. Like this role required a levity that Anne Hathaway is a master at whilst also being able to be like la miserable, like deep traumatized wrecked.

• 59:44Chris Winterbauer?

  And McAdams can do that too. Like Rachel McAdams can be so funny.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Was so hilarious.

• 59:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 59:49Lizzie Bassett?

  There's one in that list I think could absolutely do this and it's Kirsten Dunst because of Drop Dead Gorgeous alone and Dick. She's so funny.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  She's so funny.

• 59:56Lizzie Bassett?

  She could have done that. But I agree with you on the other ones for sure. So finally, the casting director moved all the way down to the bottom of her list to Anne Hathaway. At this point, best known for playing princesses in teen centric movies like Ella Enchanted and The Princess Diaries. And Fox was like, no, thank you. They wanted a dramatic actress. They didn't see her as that. They saw her as a teen.

• 1:00:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Hadn't she done Brokeback Mountain?

• 1:00:19Lizzie Bassett?

  It had not come out yet.

• 1:00:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh.

• 1:00:21Lizzie Bassett?

  That's going to pop up in just a second. But Anne Hathaway was determined. According to Elizabeth Gabler, she said, quote, "I remember Anne sitting on my sofa in my office and explaining why she wanted to do this, why she had to play the role and giving script notes about the third act. When I look back on it, it wasn't exactly what we ended up doing, but her sensibilities were completely aligned with what we did end up doing." Annie never gave up. She never stopped campaigning, calling. She came into Carla Hackens office and wrote in her zen garden, "Hire me." You have to admire it.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's nuts. That's so intense, but also she was such a key, like she, like now, now I could never imagine anyone else playing that role.

• 1:00:59Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  She is correct that it was made for her.

• 1:01:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  And even as much as I like, I'm a Kate Hudson stan for life.

• 1:01:07Lizzie Bassett?

  I love her.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  But, but Anne Hathaway brought something, a vulnerability that was so fucking magical to that movie.

• 1:01:15Lizzie Bassett?

  I think also there is something about Anne Hathaway's looks, even though she's absolutely stunning and obviously does not look like a real person in any way, shape or form, but there is something that I think reads to Hollywood as more accessible about Anne Hathaway than someone like Kate Hudson, I think.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  That's also it, is that like the transformation of like the hairdo and the new makeup and stuff and the nicer clothes was dramatic on her, even though obviously when you zoom in on that face and the blue cerulean blue sweater, she's still gorgeous. But you're right, it was a more like, holy shit moment.

• 1:01:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So the filmmaking team is like, all right, great. We found our Andy. And they actually started negotiating her deal when the studio said, not so fast. They were not on board and it was Meryl Streep who got her over the line because Meryl saw her performance in Brokeback Mountain, which she is great in. And Streep personally called then chairman and CEO of Fox, Tom Rothman, and said, she's great, you're dumb, uh, go ahead and hire her. And that, I'm paraphrasing, but that was when that got her cast. Now, meanwhile, production designer Jess Gonchar was having a hell of a time. He had only one feature credit to his name at this point, which was Capote, and that had not come out yet, when The Devil Wears Prada was kicking off production, and he had to figure out how to recreate Anna Wintour's office. Now, according to an article around the time of the film's release, he had absolutely no way

• 1:02:37Lizzie Bassett?

  of seeing it in person, so he just had to go off of one photo he'd found online. Except, many years later, David Frankel told a very different story. He said, the only real contact they had with Vogue for this movie was when Gonchar snuck into the offices and managed to stick his head in Anna Wintour's office long enough to get every detail of it. And folks, I would like to show- Show you a side by side.

• 1:03:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie, it reminds me of how they designed the bomber in Doctor Strangelove. The way you described that, where they like got the one photo from the magazine and they recreated it perfectly.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Oh, holy shit lol.

• 1:03:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  Down to the hexagon mirror.

• 1:03:14Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  Is amazing.

• 1:03:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Isn't that incredible?

• 1:03:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 1:03:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, it's funny how the movie did it better. The movie's is like slightly more aesthetically pleasing.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Lizzie Bassett?

  And according to Frankel, Anna redecorated as soon as the film came out. I assume because she saw her exact office on screen.

• 1:03:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, I also assume her second assistant did.

• 1:03:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah. She didn't do it, surely. Now, Goncho was also struggling to find any locations for the film, which they planned to shoot in New York City. It's a movie set in New York City. Doesn't seem like this should be too hard. Any ideas why this might have been a problem?

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  Cause they had no budget. Well, not no budget, but they had a low budget.

• 1:03:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, that's not exactly it, but let's talk about that for a second.

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was reading Meryl Streep talking about the first movie, saying like, we had huge budget constraints. And, and she said that that was typical.

• 1:04:02Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true. They had about $35 million, which was quite low for this.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  Which considering how flashy and beautiful this film was and had to be to sell it as genuinely evocative of the fashion industry. She said that they had huge budget constraints. I did any movie that was designed for a female audience, which is so ridiculous, given that women are still 80% of the consumer market. And we are the ones who go out and support.

• 1:04:24Lizzie Bassett?

  And buy shit.

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe not female superhero movies, but other shit, like women go out and they buy and they support. And really it's only after films like Barbie, you know, breaking a billion, that they've realized the studios that, oh, okay. Women and girls are actually were always the target movie audience. And so she said that they had a much healthier budget for the sequel of The Devil Wears Prada.

• 1:04:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, good. They earned it. But yeah, you're 100% right. They had about $35 million for this. And again, we know four or five million of that went to Meryl Streep right away. So that is not a big budget at all. We're going to get into some of the issues the budget did cause, but the locations, a little bit of a different problem.

• 1:05:09Speaker 04

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• 1:05:48Lizzie Bassett?

  It turns out, no one wanted to let them use their spaces because they were all so scared of Anna Wintour.

• 1:05:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting.

• 1:05:55Lizzie Bassett?

  So if you think about what they're filming and where they're filming, the Metropolitan Museum, absolutely no because of the Met Ball. They said, no way. Bryant Park, nope, they do Fashion Week, not doing that. The Museum of Modern Art is like, ah, fuck right off. We're not doing that.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  But Anna didn't care. She was breezy.

• 1:06:11Lizzie Bassett?

  She didn't care.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  She's a breezy girl.

• 1:06:13Lizzie Bassett?

  She didn't care, Jamila. Yeah, she's bored. She's bored by it all. She's not, you know, she's calling these people in her crypt at night.

• 1:06:18Chris Winterbauer?

  She's not her second assistant. Like, I think it's a mob-style situation, right?

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  I know, but she's Tony and she's calling the fucking shop.

• 1:06:27Chris Winterbauer?

  That's my point. She's exactly, she knows how to do it.

• 1:06:29Lizzie Bassett?

  There is a moment in the book where it's revealed that Andy has to call this chef and like scream at him as Miranda is directing her exactly what to say. And I 100% believe that that is probably what's happening here.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 1:06:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Iconic Upper East Side apartments where they had hoped to shoot Miranda's home had co-op boards that refused the film crew's entry into the buildings. Weeks went by without them being able to secure a single location. And it actually got so bad that Frankel and the rest of the team wondered if this might be the thing that kills the movie. They could not get filming locations around New York. Finally, a friend of Wendy Feinerman let them use their Upper East Side townhouse. This is why the layout in the movie of that townhouse is so different from what's in the book. It's because it was the only thing that they could get. So they had to literally change that whole sequence about, don't go upstairs. Although I think it works better in the movie because of that.

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Lizzie Bassett?

  And last but not least, they finally found a location for the ball event. And it was the one place that, according to Frankel, Anna Wintour had no influence. It was the Museum of Natural History. That's the only one that said, go ahead with the dinosaurs. So when the cast met up for the first time, Meryl Streep pulled Anne Hathaway aside and said, I want you to know, I think you're going to be great and I'm so happy to work with you. And that's the last nice thing I'm going to say to you. And this was true. She went method with Miranda Priestly, keeping herself apart from the rest of the cast for pretty much all of the shoot. For the first table read, she arrived 10 minutes late on purpose. So everyone would have to wait for her entrance, but it was worth the wait. Anne Hathaway said, quote, "I think we all had an idea of what Miranda would sound like. It was a strident, bossy, barking voice.

• 1:08:02Lizzie Bassett?

  So when Meryl opened her mouth and basically whispered, everybody in the room drew a collective gasp. It was so unexpected and brilliant."

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Although I will say, have you heard Anna Wintour talk? Because it is also an imperceptible whisper.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. Power is making people come to you.

• 1:08:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Meryl Streep did say she didn't base Priestly on Wintour. She actually said she pulled a lot from Clint Eastwood. She said, quote, "He never ever raises his voice. 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 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." Now, as McKenna was flying home from the table read, she realized she was sitting very close to the supermodel, Gisele Bundchen, and their plane was delayed two hours. So at Frankel's request, she walked over to her, asked if she'd like to be in the movie. And Bundchen said, sure. But she said, I don't want to play myself and I want to play a bitch.

• 1:09:05Lizzie Bassett?

  And so McKenna wrote the cameo for her right then and there.

• 1:09:07Speaker 02

  Love that one.

• 1:09:08Lizzie Bassett?

  I love it too. And she's fun. She did have to ask Vogue's permission to appear in the film, which she got. All right, so production kicked off with a little bit of luck. New York City's tax incentives for filming had just taken effect that essentially gave the film a 5% tax credit. And that's about where their luck ended. When Anne Hathaway was first hired, the production team told her to gain Ten pounds because of, you know, where Andy starts in the movie and Hathaway's like, great, she ate pizza, ice cream and beer for a month. But then she got to her first costume fitting with legendary costume designer Patricia Field, who was like, why did you gain 10 pounds? You need to fit into couture. This is not going to work. So Hathaway had to immediately take off the weight she had just gained and then some in order to be able to fit into the dresses in the film, which is a nightmare.

• 1:09:52Lizzie Bassett?

  And just in case you aren't familiar, Patricia Field is the iconic costume designer behind Sex and the City and much, much more. This woman is a genius, but she was also having a terrible time on this film. You pointed this out, Jamila, but there's at least a million dollars worth of clothing used in the movie, but they of course did not have the budget to buy that much stuff. They had about a hundred thousand dollars for the costume budget.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, no one was going to lend to them because they were scared of Anna.

• 1:10:14Lizzie Bassett?

  That's the problem.

• 1:10:16Chris Winterbauer?

  A hundred thousand dollars is a tiny for a movie this size.

• 1:10:20Lizzie Bassett?

  For a movie about fashion, it's crazy.

• 1:10:22Chris Winterbauer?

  That's insane.

• 1:10:23Lizzie Bassett?

  It's crazy.

• 1:10:23Chris Winterbauer?

  That does not make sense.

• 1:10:25Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 1:10:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Lizzie Bassett?

  That's what they gave them. And I think maybe they did that because the assumption was, oh, designers will lend their clothes to us for this.

• 1:10:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 1:10:33Lizzie Bassett?

  But Anna Wintour strikes again. Yes, nobody wanted to lend their clothes to the film for fear of retaliation. It actually took one designer going against the grain and agreeing to lend their clothes for the floodgates to open. Any guesses who that designer may have been?

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  Marc Jacobs? No.

• 1:10:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm, Oscar de la Renta?

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  Is it the Chanel?

• 1:10:55Lizzie Bassett?

  It's Prada.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Oh, la, la, la, la, la, of course, because the film has done so much for their brand.

• 1:11:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Should have known.

• 1:11:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 1:11:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's in the title.

• 1:11:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep. Mutia Prada did say she found the book awful, but ended up enjoying the film. And with Prada officially on board, the other designers came running. So Jamila, I have to ask, what is your favorite outfit of this movie?

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  It's the first one of the.

• 1:11:17Lizzie Bassett?

  The montage?

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  No, not the montage. It's the first one of the.

• 1:11:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, the Chanel boots?

• 1:11:23Speaker 02

  The first time it's the Chanel boots with the amazing jacket. And her hair is like insanely cut and layered. And those are all kind of like 15 denier tights.

• 1:11:34Lizzie Bassett?

  It's so good.

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  It's the chicest thing. I've ever seen in my entire life, if I ever get to look like that just one time, that put together with the big, but oh, just, I, I audibly gasped in the cinema when I saw her. And how triggered Emily Blunt gets and is like, shut up to Gisele is absolutely ideal.

• 1:11:56Lizzie Bassett?

  It's great.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  So that, that for me is like my, my favorite outfit of the movie.

• 1:12:00Lizzie Bassett?

  It's beautiful.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  What about you?

• 1:12:02Lizzie Bassett?

  I love, I love the long leather trench that she has and she has an outfit that is like multiple pieces of like brown leather when she's in the montage. And I do really love that one. But I also, I love the Chanel boots. Those are probably my two favorites. And I have mixed feelings about the cap sleeves on her gown in Paris, but that's fine. It looks beautiful on her. I'm just angry because I can't wear cap sleeves. Chris, I'm sorry, we can't leave you out of this. What is your favorite outfit in The Devil Wears Prada?

• 1:12:27Chris Winterbauer?

  It's her Harry Potter outfit. When she comes in, it's sort of like Harry Potter chic outfit. It's the first one after her transformation. It's the Chanel boots. She comes in, she's got that oversized blazer that again, looks like it's inside out or something because of the way that they've done the stitching. And she has a patch on it that looks like a Hogwarts patch, a Gryffindor patch.

• 1:12:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Great. So women see Chanel boots, you see Harry Potter. That tells us a lot.

• 1:12:49Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I see magic.

• 1:12:52Lizzie Bassett?

  You see magic. Fair enough.

• 1:12:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Thank you.

• 1:12:54Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. So it honestly is kind of amazing that they got Patricia Field in the first place, given how connected she is to the fashion industry. But she was basically just like, whatever, guys, this is, no one knows who Anna Wintour is. Like inside the fashion industry, yes, people know who she is. But she said, you know, how many people know the name Anna Wintour? It's not a slur to Anna Wintour. It's that fashion is a small segment. I want to tell a bigger story, not a story of Anna Wintour.

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. She's also the fucking Sex and the City. You know what I mean? Like she's already made her money. She doesn't have to worry about her career.

• 1:13:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. So Meryl Streep not having a great time because she's method. She's not talking to anybody. That really sucked for her. Anne Hathaway, however, was having a terrible time because of a bit of life imitating art. I don't know if you guys remember this. She was dating and living with a con man, Raffaello Folieri, an Italian con man. I'm sorry, I have to take a second to talk about this. He was running a con, which she did not. Know about, obviously, where he was saying that his New York firm was helping the Catholic Church unload unwanted real estate properties at a discounted rate to help the church recover financially from the sexual abuse scandals coming to light at the time, which is such a crazy pitch, but he leaned into this. He was like, I am personally connected to the Vatican.

• 1:14:06Lizzie Bassett?

  He had an altar in his office. He had a nun as his receptionist. Absolutely wild, wild, wild. But he was terrible to her and apparently he would get angry at her when she had to work late. David Frankel said she was really emotional on set, particularly when the shoots ran long. He always made it a problem for her. She did eventually leave him in 2008, 10 days before he was dragged out of his parents apartment by the FBI. And he served four years in prison. And just so you know, Donald Trump had something to say about it. He said, quote, Anne Hathaway hasn't remained very loyal to him, has she? So when he had plenty of money, she liked him, but then after that, not as good, right? I don't think that was the problem for Anne Hathaway, a multimillionaire movie star.

• 1:14:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Anyway, the whole thing was very humiliating for her. She eventually had to hand over tons of jewelry he'd bought her and her personal diaries. But it sounds like she was living with an emotionally abusive con man boyfriend while also trying to stay desperately thin, working her ass off on a movie she'd fought incredibly hard for, AKA having honestly a much worse time than Andy Sachs does in the movie. And in December of 2005, filming wrapped. Now, the film is scheduled to release the same weekend as Brian Singer's Superman Returns, which to your point, Jamila, had a budget of over $200 million. But before it came out, Anna Wintour was invited to a private screening at the Paris Theater in New York. She came with her daughter and even though she frequently would leave plays that she was very bored by, she stayed until the very end.

• 1:15:33Lizzie Bassett?

  And apparently her daughter leaned over and said, Mom, they really got you. So The Devil Wears Prada released wide on June 30th, 2006, and it absolutely tore up the box office. It made $326 million worldwide. And by the way, Superman Returns made $391 million worldwide, which yes, is more money, but as we know on this podcast, that means that one probably about Broke even because of marketing and the cost of the movie, while The Devil Wears Prada was absolutely minting money. Of course, the film was not at all bad for Anna Wintour. She became a household name and in 2006 as one of Barbara Walters' most fascinating people. And the film received two Oscar nominations, one for Patricia Fields' costume design and one for Meryl Streep.

• 1:16:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Critics praised the film and Meryl's performance, but it also, it was a real sea change for the fashion industry. The Devil Wears Prada 2 will, of course, hit theaters on May 1st, and we will be reviewing it as a bonus episode, so stick around for that. But it's already made some headlines. I don't know if you've seen this, Jamila, but Streep and Hathaway attended Milan Fashion Week while filming, and they were reportedly both pretty horrified by how thin the models on the runways looked. Streep revealed that Anne Hathaway headed straight for the producers and secured, quote, "promises that the models in the show that we were putting together for our film would not be so skeletal."

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  That's our goal.

• 1:16:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Good for you, Anne Hathaway. Not good that that's a conversation that needs to be had, but I'm glad she did it.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:54Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, let's end on a happy note. Anne Hathaway might not have found love on the set of The Devil Wears Prada, but Stanley Tucci did. So Stanley Tucci very sadly lost his beloved wife Kate, a social worker who he'd been with since 1995 in 2009, following a battle with breast cancer.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, but then Emily Blunt.

• 1:17:11Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right.

• 1:17:12Speaker 02

  Came to the rescue.

• 1:17:13Lizzie Bassett?

  So Tucci had met Emily Blunt's sister Felicity, a literary agent at the premiere of The Devil Wears Prada. But a few years later, they met again at Blunt's wedding to John Krasinski. They fell in love and married in 2012. Yes, there is a massive 21-year age gap, something that made Stanley Tucci very nervous. But in the end, love won out, and they have been happily married ever since. All right, Jamila, this is how we end every episode. We like to ask, what went right?

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  What went right with that film is it's an incredible time capsule of a very strange moment in history and in the industry.

• 1:17:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  I think it was cast perfectly. There's nobody I would have changed for any one of those roles. I think the casting director deserves an Oscar for that film. Meryl Streep set a new standard for female villains and also empathizing with female villains. You know, we rarely empathize even with female heroes in film. And she forced a through line that it was incredibly interesting about what it takes to make it to the top of an industry that is ultimately run by men, even if it presents as a female. That is a mask because the fashion industry is ultimately owned, as are the studios, as the music labels by men. And they use women kind of as like to go out and do their, you know, dog's body work whilst men sit in the shadows, making all the actual money from this.

• 1:18:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Dog's body.

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:31Lizzie Bassett?

  A British term I just learned.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  Indeed. So I think that the soundtrack was great, the fashion was phenomenal. It is a film that ultimately, I think, was trying to tell us that he was the real villain and telling us that he was a cunt. And I think we all missed it because we were all drunk on patriarchy when we were young. And that her friends were dicks and there was no charity offered to the boyfriend or to the friends. I don't know if that was subliminal or if I'm just being too charitable.

• 1:19:00Lizzie Bassett?

  No, I think you're right, especially when you think about David Frankel saying that this to him was about, what does it take to be?

• 1:19:05Speaker 02

  Excellent. Yeah.

• 1:19:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally. I think you're right.

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  And I think it was an interesting journey of, for me, this is what I took from the movie. And I think why I returned to the movie is that I really resonate with not being interested in the ruthlessness required for greatness. And I think that it makes her seem healthy and happy at the end when she steps away from that world, you know? There's a part of her that misses that adrenaline, you know, when she sees Miranda in the street. But ultimately, it was like, it's not worth selling your soul for. And as someone in this industry who's been offered so much in exchange for me to give a lot of myself and make sacrifices, I'm really glad that I didn't. And I've therefore lived a peaceful and happier life than all of my peers pretty much combined.

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  As to how like well mentally I feel because I didn't take those steps. And so I love that it is a film that champions greatness whilst also championing peace and friendship and love and community. You know, I think it does a really good job at showing that both things have their merits.

• 1:20:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  And that ultimately picking herself and her sanity and not being a slave to this lunatic woman who doesn't look happy. It really makes the point that like having all. The money and all the power in the world does not make a happy person. And we see that when we see Meryl stripped back and crying had her divorce, et cetera.

• 1:20:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Beautifully said. All right, Chris, what went right for you?

• 1:20:27Chris Winterbauer?

  I think the obvious one is Meryl Streep. And maybe we'll leave that to you. But I think the less obvious one, because she was the ninth choice. And I love Emily Blunt in this movie. And also just a little plug for your sister's sister, the indie film that I think kind of helped break her out a few years later, Lynn Shelton. Anne Hathaway is great in this movie.

• 1:20:44Lizzie Bassett?

  She is great.

• 1:20:44Chris Winterbauer?

  And I think it's hard to be the straight man in movies like this. And I think she does a really nice job. She never tries to overpower any of the scenes. She kind of understands her role very well in this type of movie. And she can be very funny. She's very funny in Ocean's Eight.

• 1:20:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:57Chris Winterbauer?

  I didn't love that movie, but I thought she was great in it.

• 1:21:00Lizzie Bassett?

  She's one of the best parts of it.

• 1:21:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Absolutely. And I, I think she was easy to hate on for a while because people felt like she had this drama camp kid energy to it.

• 1:21:08Lizzie Bassett?

  I hate that. She just works hard.

• 1:21:10Chris Winterbauer?

  I do too. I think she's a great actress and she's also ageless, apparently, as we'll see. She is doing whatever Tony Goldwyn's doing, as you mentioned before. But she's really excellent in this movie. And like Rachel McAdams, I think she has a lot of range and she can do comedy and she can do drama and she can do science fiction and she can do superhero movies. And I was really impressed to hear how much she fought for this role, you know, coming off of something. I mean, she had just un-broke Back Mountain. It could have been easy for her to say, like, I just deserved to have something handed to me, which she did. She would, you know, was, that's an Oscar winning film that she had just done and she's excellent in it, as Meryl recognized. So I'll give mine to Anne Hathaway.

• 1:21:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Perfect. I'm with you 100%. I have never subscribed to the Anne Hathaway hate. I think honestly, it may have started a bit with that con man boyfriend. Cause there was a bit of the like, well, how could you have not known? And if you look back at some of the articles from the time, there were people saying, well, you know, he was only doing this so he could have money to spend it on Anne Hathaway. And it's just like, fuck you. And then there's the Oscars with James Franco and, and then Les Mis. And from there you get this idea that she's sort of a try hard, to which I say, yeah, she tries really hard. Is that a bad thing? No, it's not. She's an incredible. Incredible actress. She works her ass off. I can't wait to see her in The Devil Wears Prada 2. I'm not going to give it to Meryl Streep. She's obviously incredible in this movie, as is Emily Blunt.

• 1:22:35Lizzie Bassett?

  All the actors are wonderful. I want to give it to Aileen Brosh McKenna because having read the book, I think what she is able to do with this adaptation is so impressive. She makes something that is truly inactive. It's just a transcription, really.

• 1:22:50Chris Winterbauer?

  As Charlie Kaufman would say, Lizzie, in adaptation, it's that sprawling New Yorker shit.

• 1:22:55Lizzie Bassett?

  It literally is.

• 1:22:56Chris Winterbauer?

  I can't structure this.

• 1:22:58Lizzie Bassett?

  It's exactly what the book is, spot on. And she just does such a good job. And she makes such a tight movie. It's a complicated movie. There's depth to all of these characters. It's funny. Hats off to you, Aileen Brosh McKenna. This is, this is a tour de force piece of screenwriting here. So that's who I will give it to. Jamila, thank you so, so much for being here with us and taking the time to explore what is truly one of my favorite movies.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Is there anything that you'd like to plug before you leave?

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  Oh, well, I have a podcast called Wrong Turns with Jamila Jamil. It's very funny. Lots of your favorite comedians in the world come on and tell me terrifying tales that they should have taken to the grave, really, but chose to share with all of us. I will be doing Netflix as a joke festival in Los Angeles on May the 4th at 7:00 PM with Chris Fleming and Lisa Traeger and LeMond Morris. And then I also write a sub stack called A Low Desire to Please, which I named after my dog when he got his first training card. They said that he's very smart. He just has a low desire to please. And I was like, that is my dog. I birthed him out of my vagina because we must share the same DNA. That's me all the way through. So, yeah, so those are the things. And then projects will come out later this year.

• 1:24:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Amazing. Thank you so much.

• 1:24:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Thank you for being here.

• 1:24:14Lizzie Bassett?

  You were so lovely, so generous with your time and everything that you shared. And I really love your podcast. It makes me happy.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:24:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Chris, if people would like to support this podcast, how can they do that?

• 1:24:24Chris Winterbauer?

  A few very simple ways. Number one, tell a family member or friend, "Hey, you should check out What Went Wrong." Pretty good. Number two, leave us a rating and review on whatever podcatcher you are listening to this show on. We appreciate it. It helps people see that people listen to this. It's a signal. Maybe you should too. Number three, subscribe on whatever podcatcher you are listening to us on, so you get new episodes every Monday and occasionally Fridays. Number four, if you'd like more from us, we now offer bonus episodes through a couple different platforms. For $5 a month, you can get bonus episodes through Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You get at least one bonus episode per month. Typically, these are reviews of newly released movies, but we are experimenting with some new formats, especially this summer. And then, number three, if you really want to

• 1:25:09Chris Winterbauer?

  go the full nine yards, you can join our Patreon. Head to www.patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast, and for $5, you can get not only the bonus episodes, but access to our fan community, comments, et cetera, and an ad-free RSS feed. And for $50, you can get a Miranda Priestly shout-out just like one of these.

• 1:25:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Adrian Peng, Korea, Angeline Renee Cook, Beatrix Earhart. Earhart? Is it impossible to find a lovely slender paratrooper? Am I reaching for the stars here? Not really. Ben Schindelman, Blaze Ambrose, Brian Donahue, Brittany Morris, Brooke, Cameron Smith, CGraceB, Chris Lille, Chris, by all means, move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills me. Chris Zaka, David Friskalanti, Darren and Dale Conkling, Don Schiavel, MZodia, Evan Downey, Felicia G., Film It Yourself, The Tales of Your Incompetence

• 1:26:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Do Not Interest Me, Frankenstein, Galen and Miguel, The Broken Glass Kids, The Castin Crew of Win a Trip to Brown Town, Grace Potter, Half Gray Hound, James McAvoy.

• 1:26:29Lizzie Bassett?

  James McAvoy, there you are, James. How many times do I have to scream your name? Jason Frankel, J.J. Rapido, Jory Hillpiper, Jose Emelano Salto Del Giorgio, Karina Kanaba, Kate Ellington, Kathleen Olson, Amy Elgashlager, McCoy, Amy, Florals for Spring. Groundbreaking. Lazy Freddie, Lena LJ, Lydia Howes, Marc Bertha, Mariposas Humans? No, no, that wasn't a question. Matthew Jacobson, Michael McGrath, Nate the Knife, Nate, yes, that Nate.

• 1:27:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Am I supposed to remember who you are, Nate? Rosemary Southward, Roger, Sadie, Just Sadie, Scott Oshita, Somon Chinani, Steve Winterbauer, Suzanne Johnson, the Provost Family, the Os sound like Os, that's all.

• 1:27:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow. That was cruel, Lizzie. I don't know why you said such mean things about our most loyal patrons, but it will make them stronger. Excellence is what we demand. Before we announce what's coming next week, may I offer, Lizzie, my favorite comp for the budgetary point that Jamila was making at the time?

• 1:27:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 1:27:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Talladega Nights, The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

• 1:27:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 1:27:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Same year, I really liked that movie.

• 1:27:58Lizzie Bassett?

  I do, too.

• 1:27:58Chris Winterbauer?

  It's very silly, very funny. Seventy-three million dollar budget, two times the budget of The Devil Wears Prada. I would argue roughly equivalent in star power, although not as acclaimed dramatically. Will Ferrell is an enormous name, and John C. Reilly's an amazing actor. But my point is, it takes place within a specialized world, NASCAR in this instance, very male world versus more female world, the fashion world. And again, twice the budget, but made half as much at the box office as Devil Wears Prada. So, anyway, that would be my comp.

• 1:28:27Lizzie Bassett?

  That hundred thousand dollars for the costume budget is nuts.

• 1:28:30Chris Winterbauer?

  It's crazy.

• 1:28:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, I get it. I think they thought everybody was just gonna lend clothes, but yeah.

• 1:28:34Chris Winterbauer?

  I think that was probably, they did an initial pass at the budget, and they're trying to figure out how to squeeze it into. That's a 35 number that they have. And they say, well, if we just slash the costume budget by 90%, because we assume we can get these for free, then we can get the green light.

• 1:28:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:28:47Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like a weird math you do to try to get something to where it needs to be.

• 1:28:50Lizzie Bassett?

  By the way, make sure that you come back, not this Friday, but next Friday, because we will be covering The Devil Wears Prada 2 for all of our patrons and bonus subscribers. I'm so excited to watch it. I can't wait to talk about it with you, Chris. So make sure that you come back, not this Friday, but next Friday for that bonus episode. But in the meantime, Chris, what do we have coming up one week from today on Monday?

• 1:29:13Chris Winterbauer?

  So The Devil Wears Prada 2 is going to tee us perfectly into sequel month, as Chris describes it. So for May the 4th, not only could you check out Jamila Jamil's Netflix is a Joke performance, you can also tune in for our first sequel of the month, The Empire Strikes Back. We are diving into the dark second entries of a couple of trilogies that we have started on this podcast, and Empire Strikes Back will be the first.

• 1:29:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Great. All right. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening. Bye.

• 1:29:41Speaker 05

  To support What Went Wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, subscribe on Patreon, Apple, or Spotify for $5 a month. Patreon subscriptions also come with an ad-free RSS feed. You can also visit our website, whatwentwrongpod.com for more info. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom Podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krupso.