While most people assume Meryl Streep was channeling Anna Wintour for her Devil Wears Prada character, the Oscar winner says she was actually “imitating” two top Hollywood filmmakers.
The actress — who first played cynical fashion editor Miranda Priestly in the 2006 film and later reprised her role for the upcoming sequel — made a recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where she revealed that she actually drew inspiration from Mike Nichols and Clint Eastwood for the role.
“I was basically imitating Mike Nichols that whole time,” Streep told the host. “If Mike Nichols and Clint Eastwood had a baby… it would be Miranda Priestly.”
This may come as a surprise to some fans, as many have likened Priestly to Wintour since The Devil Wears Prada was based on Lauren Weisberger’s novel of the same name, which was inspired by her own experiences working as an assistant to the former editor in chief of Vogue (Wintour now serves as chief content officer for Condé Nast and global editorial director of Vogue).
Streep explained that Nichols’ commanding directing style, mixed with sly humor, helped form her character’s tone.
“The command on the set. And Mike would do it sort of with a sly humor,” the Mamma Mia! star said. “And Miranda, she knows that what she’s saying is sort of snide, but she knows it’s kind of funny too. And that little way of doing things, people take as mean, but it’s funny. I think it’s funny.”
As for Eastwood, Streep was influenced by the filmmaker’s calmness while also being authoritative. “Clint would never raise his voice,” she said. “He would direct and people had to lean forward to hear what he was saying. … He’d often shoot the rehearsal and then move on. So his crew was like on the balls of their feet. No one was sitting down except me.”
When asked by Stephen Colbert, Streep added that she never told Eastwood about his influence on her character, but did inform Nichols. “I told Mike, and he was thrilled,” she quipped.
The Out of Africa actress previously collaborated with Nichols on his films Silkwood, Heartburn and the HBO miniseries Angels in America. She also worked with Eastwood on his movie The Bridges of Madison County.
Though Streep doesn’t list Wintour as one of her inspirations for the role, the Vogue editor revealed her true thoughts last year on the long-running comparisons between her and Priestly.
“I went to the premiere wearing Prada, completely having no idea what the film was going to be about,” Wintour said to New Yorker editor David Remnick during an episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast. “And I think that the fashion industry were very sweetly concerned for me about the film, that it was going to paint me in some kind of difficult light.”
However, the fashion icon said that once she watched the Oscar-nominated film, her reaction was quite different from what she was anticipating.
“First of all it was Meryl Streep, which, fantastic,” Wintour said. “And then I went to see the film, and I found it highly enjoyable. It was very funny. Miuccia [Prada] and I talk about it a lot, and I say to her, ‘Well it was really good for you.’”
She added that the film “had a lot of humor to it. It had a lot of wit. It had Meryl Streep. I mean, it was Emily Blunt, [and] they were all amazing. In the end, I thought it was a fair shot.”
The Devil Wears Prada 2 hits theaters on May 1.
