Anne Hathaway’s ‘extremely funny’ axed scene from Devil Wears Prada 2
The process of making a film is a bit like pulling together a magazine: things get cut. For The Devil Wears Prada 2 a series of celebrity cameos didn’t even make it into the film.
Deleted scenes are an inevitable reality of movie making, but some cuts hurt more than most. Aline Brosh McKenna, the screenwriter of both of the movies, says she’s “very unsentimental” about the process, although talking to City PM, she said there was one axed scene that hurt the most.
They’d filmed an entire storyline following Andy Sachs in Milan, getting excitable about being in Italy’s fashion capital, but it never left the editing suite.
Anne Hathaway’s Devil Wears Prada 2 scene cut
“There’s a funny moment when they get to Milan where Andy starts talking about the history of Milan,” Brosh McKenna tells City PM.
“It was extremely funny. It was her being boring in a know-it-all way, which just really made me laugh, but we didn’t need it.”
“I made an expensive TV show [Crazy Ex Girlfriend] for four years and you get very unsentimental about tossing things out.”
Hathaway was one of dozens of high-profile A-Listers who had scenes cut from the sequel.
Former Vogue editor Anna Wintour, White Lotus actor Syndey Sweeney and How To Get Away with Murder star Conrad Ricamora also had their scenes cut. Adrian Grenier, who played the boyfriend of Hathaway’s Andy Sachs character in the first movie, also had his role pulled from the sequel.
“I had an idea about sneaking him into a cameo,” the film’s director David Frankel told Entertainment Weekly in April. “And, in the end, it was just too late in our production schedule to make it happen.”
Frankel also told the publication that Anna Wintour did one take on camera, but they decided to include her in the film would be “too meta”.
Devil Wears Prada 2 ‘retains bite’ of the original
Meryl Streep’s character Miranda Priestly is a fashion editor who’s inspired by Wintour, although Wintour had historically distanced herself from the character. During the recent media circuit for the sequel she has been much closer to the project, even helping to promote it.
“We actually explicitly didn’t want Anna to be in the movie because it’s a parallel world,” Frankel told the publication. “It was like, well, what is Vogue and who is Anna Wintour in a world where there’s a Runway and Miranda Priestly? It felt like it was too meta.”
In this newspaper’s four-star review of The Devil Wears Prada 2, we said that the sequel “retains the bite” of the original.
‘Blunt is given serious fangs’
“Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna has a firm grasp of where these women would be today,” we wrote. “Sachs is growing tired of the fight for work and while Charlton may have landed on her feet, she’s still emotionally vulnerable. Priestly has softened a little – which is fair enough. Don’t people tend to mellow as they age?
“She is still as savagely cutting as ever, which feels appropriate given The Devil Wears Prada 2’s release coincides with the ‘end’ of woke culture. In one hilarious moment Priestly – to the horror of her new assistant – describes models in a photoshoot as “milling around like starving goats in a methadone clinic”.
“Blunt – given serious fangs this time around – is equally commanding. She gets more of the satire this time around, but underneath the professional steeliness she’s still so green you want to give her a hug.”
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