A lot has changed in fashion, media, and culture since The Devil Wears Prada was released two decades ago. But as Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep revive their characters for the upcoming sequel, The Devil Wears Prada 2, they’re realizing some things have unfortunately stayed the same. In a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Streep revealed that Hathaway confronted producers about casting “skeletal” models in the film.
Streep recalled being “struck by how not only beautiful and young — everyone seems young to me — but alarmingly thin the models were,” noting, “I thought that all had been addressed years ago.” Hathaway, she continued, noticed, too. “She made a beeline to the producers about it, securing promises that the models in the show that we were putting together for our film would not be so skeletal,” Streep said. “She’s a stand-up girl.”
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is set for release on May 1. Streep, Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci are all reprising their roles in the sequel, which was filming all over New York this past summer.
The movie arrives as conversation around thinness, particularly as it is presented to impressionable audiences online, is at the forefront of celebrity discourse. In November, Jameela Jamil published a TikTok pushing back against the idea that it is “body-shaming to comment on the fact that there is a rapid rise of the aesthetic of emaciation amongst women in Hollywood. Women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s even.”
She continued, “All of a sudden, becoming so thin that you can see their ribs, you can see their hip bones jutting out. No one’s saying they look disgusting, that would be body-shaming. What we are commenting on it for is because it’s so widespread, it’s so extreme, it’s happened so fast … I’m sad that strength is no longer aspirational. I’m sad that frailty and fragility is a beauty standard in this day and age of feminism. We’ve come too far to be risking our health and our happiness and our longevity.”
Kazunari Ninomiya and Naru Asanuma in ‘Exit 8.’Neon
