They have become synonymous with the characters they represent in The Devil Wears Prada.
But Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway almost didn’t star in the iconic film.
In a tell-all interview with Variety to mark the 10th anniversary of the movie, the cast dropped some bombshells, which included a number of surprising casting difficulties.
Hathway admitted she had to fight hard for the role of heroine Andy Sachs, which was originally offered to Rachel McAdams who rejected the offer multiple times before it was offered to Hathaway.
“I didn’t have to audition,” Hathaway tells Variety. “I had to be patient. I wasn’t the first choice.”
Knowing that, she immediately set out to prove she was the best option for the role, and after meeting with Fox vice-president Carla Hacken, she wrote the words ‘hire me’ in the sand of the executive’s Zen garden – which she later discovered.
Meanwhile Streep, who plays icy fashion editor of Runway magazine Miranda Priestly, also revealed she initially turned the offer down before negotiating herself a higher pay for the role.
“The offer was to my mind slightly, if not insulting, not perhaps reflective of my actual value to the project,” the Oscar-winning actress said. “There was my ‘goodbye moment,’ and then they doubled the offer.”
Meanwhile, directors considered more than 100 actresses for the part of Miranda’s first assistant Emily.
Emily Blunt landed the role of Emily last minute, after missing out on the lead role in Eragon, and after auditioning with a British accent, the character was later switched from American to British to suit Blunt.
There were also struggles to find an actor to play top Runway editor Nigel, with Stanley Tucci accepting the role just 72 hours before his character debuted on set.
The film, based on Lauren Weisberger’s best-selling novel “The Devil Wears Prada” opened on June 30, 2006 and went on to gross $326 million at the box office.
Streep won a Golden Globe award in 2007 for her performance in the film and was also nominated for an Academy Award the same year.
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