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As a film, The Devil Wears Prada made the characters of Miranda, Andy, Emily, and Nigel iconic—like designer-clad Avengers, each with a signature look and signature lines (“That’s all,” “Can you please spell Gabbana,” “When I feel like I’m about to faint I eat a cube of cheese,” “Gird your loins,” etc.). But how much of that, exactly, is owed to Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel, and what was simply the invention of screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna and director David Frankel? We are so glad you asked.
Here, a breakdown of how Miranda, Andy, Emily, Nigel, and co. in The Devil Wears Prada the novel compare to their counterparts in The Devil Wears Prada the film—and which one we think wins out.
Andrea (”Andy”) Sachs, second assistant to the editor-in-chief of Runway
While, in the film’s iconic opening montage, we first meet Andy jovially putting on her less-than-great interview outfit, unglamorously brushing her teeth, and (gasp!) eating an onion bagel, in Weisberger’s original text we meet her in medias res as Miranda’s assistant, inexpertly driving her boss’s luxury convertible across town while clad in suede Gucci pants and Manolos. Both are recent college graduates—Book Andy from Brown, Movie Andy from Northwestern—with dreams of being a “real” journalist and working somewhere like The New Yorker. Book Andy is from Avon, Connecticut, and smokes incessantly; Movie Andy is given neither a specific hometown nor any particular vices.
Obviously, film being a visual medium, Andy’s glow-up feels a lot more dramatic in the movie version of The Devil Wears Prada than in the book, where her first Runway-appropriate outfit is described as a “tweedy Prada skirt, black Prada turtleneck, and midcalf-length Prada boots,” handed to her one night by a friendly fashion assistant named Jeffy. In the film, the look is a double-breasted black blazer with over-the-knee leather boots, both from Chanel.
In terms of attitude, Andy’s simmering rage at Miranda is much more present—and more fixed—on the page than on the screen. Indeed, by humanizing Miranda (more on that later), the film ends up creating a different Andy, too.
This is a tough one, but I’m going to have to give the competitive advantage to Anne Hathaway’s filmic interpretation. Sure, she could have stood to learn a few things about fashion herself instead of making her ineptitude everyone else’s problem, but she’s much less of a brat about her job, has far less complicated relationships with her friends and boyfriend (more on them later), and parts ways with Miranda far more peaceably. (While Movie Andy simply doesn’t follow Miranda into a show, dropping her cellphone into a Parisian fountain when her boss calls, Book Andy leaves her post with a “Fuck you, Miranda. Fuck you.”)
Miranda Priestly, editor-in-chief, Runway
In the book as in the movie, Andy first meets Miranda during her interview. “Since I’d never seen so much as a picture of Miranda Priestly, I was surprised to see how willowy she was,” Andy observes. “She had perfect posture—rare for a tall woman—and held her head high, pronounced chin proudly forward, in a manner so natural it seemed almost forced. The hand she held out was feminine, soft, with the long, graceful fingers of a concert pianist. She had to turn her head upward to look me in the eye, although she did not stand to greet me. Her expertly dyed blond hair was pulled back in a chic knot, deliberately loose enough to look casual but still supremely neat, and while she did not smile, she did not appear particularly intimidating.” In the movie, on the other hand, we’re treated to a hilarious montage of Runway staffers panic-applying makeup, changing out their clogs for heels, and generally freaking out about their boss’s arrival at the office.
One notable aspect of Book Miranda is her heritage; she’s described as one of 11 children from an Orthodox Jewish family in London. Andy gleans further details from Google: “After saving the small bills her older siblings would slip her whenever they were able, Miriam promptly dropped out of high school upon turning seventeen—a mere three months shy of graduation—to take a job as an assistant to an up-and-coming British designer, helping him put together his shows each season. After a few years of making a name for herself as one of the darlings of London’s burgeoning fashion world and studying French at night, she scored a job as a junior editor at the French Chic magazine in Paris….at twenty-four years old, Miriam Princhek became Miranda Priestly, shedding her undeniably ethnic name for one with more panache. Her rough, cockney-girl British accent was soon replaced by a carefully cultivated, educated one, and by her late twenties, Miriam’s transformation from Jewish peasant to secular socialite was complete.”
We don’t learn nearly so much about Miranda in the movie, other than that she appears to be American, she has twins, and she has at least one ex-husband. We do, however, get a much more humanized version of her—specifically in a scene where she confides in Andy about her marital woes and the pain of watching her daughters lose “another father…figure.”
I mean, the film version is embodied by Meryl Streep, so it almost seems unfair to stack her up against the book version, but…yeah, Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly’s Runway forever!
Emily Charlton, first assistant to the editor-in-chief of Runway
Here’s what Andy makes of Emily on their first meeting: “It took just over a half hour before a tall, thin girl emerged from behind the glass doors. A calf-length leather skirt hung from her hips, and her unruly red hair was piled in one of those messy but still glamorous buns on top of her head. Her skin was flawless and pale, not so much as a single freckle or blemish, and it stretched perfectly over the highest cheekbones I’d ever seen. She didn’t smile.” Movie Emily doesn’t smile either, immediately making a crack at Andy’s expense about HR having “an odd sense of humor” before beckoning her forward for their interview.
Well, Blunt’s Emily is famously British, and her arc is very clear (wants to go to Paris/doesn’t get to go to Paris), whereas Book Emily’s ambitions are a little more muddled. We know she wants power and a rich fiancé—maybe not in that order—and she emerges as a sort-of ally for Andy at times. But it’s often one step forward, two steps back as far as their put-upon work-buddy dynamic goes. I do love where the movie leaves Emily, though—injured in both body and spirit, sure, but sniffily agreeing to accept Andy’s stash of freebie Runway clothes.
If you like them mean (and British), it’s Blunt. But there’s something endearing about Book Emily, too, whose only meanginful flaw seems to be taking her job too seriously.
Nigel Kipling, editor, Runway
Stanley Tucci’s version of Nigel announces himself in the film with the immortal line, “Gird your loins” (and is actually granted a last name), while the book version of Nigel is a brash, larger-than-life, somewhat André Leon Talley–ish presence, whom Andy describes thusly: “I turned just in time to see the man, who was at least seven feet tall, with tanned skin and black hair, pointing directly at me. He had 250 pounds stretched over his incredibly tall frame and was so muscular, so positively ripped, that it looked as though he might just explode out of his denim…catsuit? Ohmigod! He was wearing a catsuit… He looked around thirty-five years old, although all the muscles and the deep tan and the positively chiseled jawbone could have been hiding ten years or adding five. He was flapping his hands at me and motioning for me to get up off the floor. I stood, unable to take my eyes off him, and he turned to examine me immediately.”
Nigel—who appears to be a fashion editor—is granted a lot more story in the film than in the book, but that story is mostly depressing, as Miranda cheats him out of a prime job to save her own skin.
With all due respect to Stanley Tucci, I’m going to have to say that Book Nigel comes out the winner here. Yes, he’s pretty much an incidental character, but at least that incidental character is portrayed as fun, secretly quite kind, and speaking entirely in all-caps. (For instance: “KNEE-HIGH BOOTS? WITH A KNEE-LENGTH SKIRT? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? BABY GIRL, IN CASE YOU’RE UNAWARE—IN CASE YOU MISSED THE BIG, BLACK SIGN BY THE DOOR—THIS IS RUNWAY MAGAZINE, THE FUCKING HIIPPEST MAGAZINE ON EARTH. ON EARTH! BUT NO WORRIES, HONEY, NIGEL WILL GET RID OF THAT JERSEY MALL-RAT LOOK YOU’VE GOT GOING SOON ENOUGH.”)
Nate/Alex Fineman, Andy’s boyfriend
I don’t totally know why Andy’s longtime boyfriend’s name changed from Alex to Nate in the movie, but in the book he’s described as a brand-new teacher at P.S. 277 in the Bronx who’s “trying to figure out how he could make a difference” in the lives of a bunch of world-weary, jaded city kids. In the movie, however, we meet Nate while he’s using his restaurant-chef skills to make Andy a fancy grilled cheese with Jarlsberg in it, which is undoubtedly an improvement (if your priorities, like mine, are skewed toward treats).
I don’t necessarily adore either version of Andy’s boyfriend, but while much has been written about how Nate is low-key the real villain of the movie, I actually think Alex is far worse. He’s smug and self-righteous pretty much throughout the novel, even when Andy’s best friend is on death’s door. I fully support Andy in eventually moving on from his ass.
No contest: annoying but self-aware Nate (“Andy, I make port wine reductions all day. I’m not exactly in the Peace Corps”) trumps whiny (“I’ve been around for the last year waiting to talk to you—begging, sometimes—and you haven’t been all that interested”), wounded Alex.
Lily Goodwin, Andy’s best friend
The book version of Lily has been Andy’s best friend since eighth grade and has kind of a rockin’ backstory: abandoned by her hippie parents and raised by her strict grandmother, she’s a Russian literature PhD student at Columbia with very bad taste in men who works odd jobs to pay the rent on her Harlem studio. The movie version, however, is just sort of…around? What a waste of Tracie Thoms’s talents.
I mean, we simply don’t know much about Movie Lily, aside from the fact that she works in a gallery, likes designer purses, and seems very invested in Andy and Nate’s relationship. Book Lily, on the other hand, is something of a trainwreck—one whose downward spiral, DUI, and ensuing hospitalization end up creating the motivating circumstances for Andy to turn her back on Runway. (The movie employs the classic trick of adding an ambiguously gay guy to Andy’s friend group to flesh out her non-Runway world, but we learn even less about him—played by Mad Men’s Rich Sommer—than we do about Lily.)
I have to give this one to Book Lily; she may be a mess, but at least she’s an interesting mess!
