May 3, 2026 11:11am PT

‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ Is Built Around a Radical Hook: That Moviegoers Care About the Future of Magazines. But Maybe They Do

Owen Gleiberman

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Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

@OwenGleiberman

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In the juiciest speech in “The Devil Wears Prada,” Miranda Priestly, the frosty-haired, frosty-souled Runway magazine editrix played by Meryl Streep (in a performance that should have won her the Oscar), looks over Andy (Anne Hathaway), her dressed-down second assistant, and dresses her down all the more by explaining that Andy may think she has nothing to do with the fashion world, but she couldn’t be more wrong.

Using Andy’s lumpy cerulean blue sweater to illustrate the point, Miranda explains how fashion filters down into the world in a thousand ways no one realizes, and that we all obey its dictates. (The speech was parodied this week in the best “Saturday Night Live” promo I’ve ever seen, with the great James Austin Johnson playing Miranda; it’s astonishing that they didn’t save it for the show.) Miranda’s speech is Andy’s first big lesson, and it’s also the first sign that Miranda isn’t just a sadistic boss from hell, impossibly haughty and demanding, giving Andy seven tasks to do at once, mixing in personal errands, expecting her to know things as if she were reading Miranda’s mind. Miranda certainly is all that, but it’s because she has a vision — of fashion, of the larger world, of her rightful place in it.

'The Devil Wears Prada 2' Is Built Around a Radical Hook: That Moviegoers Care About the Future of Magazines. But Maybe They Do