Turns out the making of The Devil Wears Prada was almost as chaotic as working for Miranda Priestley herself.
Nearly 20 years after the fashion classic became a pop culture obsession, director David Frankel is finally admitting the movie was held together by caffeine, panic and what he describes as pure luck.
“So many things have to go right, so much luck has to happen,” Frankel said. “You look back and it’s like somebody making a hole in one.”
The biggest headache? Paris. Or rather… the complete lack of it.
Frankel revealed the studio greenlit the movie with a $35 million budget – then immediately told him filming in France was off the table.
“I freaked out and ran to the executives and they said, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll figure something out.’”
At one point, the production had already spent seven weeks filming in New York because anyone even knew how the Paris scenes would work. And according to Frankel, things somehow got worse.
“They said you can’t bring Meryl Streep to Paris! And we had to manufacture a way to make it look like Miranda was there.”
Meanwhile, behind the designer coats and iconic one-liners, the set itself was not exactly thriving.
“Meryl wasn’t happy all the time,” Frankel admitted, adding that Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt were both dealing with personal struggles during filming.
“We failed miserably in many, many ways — it was just a really hard shoot.”
Ironically, the movie about workplace stress apparently came with plenty of its own.
The Devil Wears Prada sequel is running in theaters worldwide.
