S02E01 — The Devil Wears Prada

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for The Devil Wears Prada.

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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

What do you get when you combine an early 2000s flick, a female empowerment (?) novel, Anne Hathaway, and Meryl Streep?

The answer: The Devil Wears Prada.

But how does the film compare to the original book that inspired it? We share all the gritty details!

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The book paints Andy as an insufferable, judgmental mess who stumbles through a sea of unlikable characters, while the movie gives us a stylish, heartfelt story with real growth and iconic performances. The film swaps out cynicism for charm, making it a crowd-pleaser you’ll want to rewatch again and again.

Tim: The film was better

Donna: The film was better

Rebekah: The film was better

Josiah: The film was better

Full Episode Transcript

Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.

[00:00:00] Rebekah: Welcome to the Book Is Better Podcast. This is a clean podcast and we are a family of four reviewing book to film adaptations. A spoiler warning for today’s episode, folks. We are discussing The Devil Wears Prada. Only an 18 a movie from 18 years ago based on a book from even. Further back than that. So we are going to spoil the whole thing, including the book, but does that matter?

Because should you read the book, you’ll have to listen to find out. Uh, so in addition to a spoiler warning, I will also say a content warning for this episode, depending on the ears that you’re listening around. Um, this is a PG 13 book or sorry, PG 13 film and an R rated book. So we probably will talk about some things.

Uh, that are not necessarily things you might want to discuss with your little kids. So just want to warn you about that in advance. As we get started, we like to introduce ourselves so you know who you’re listening to, and we like to give a little fun fact. And so today’s fun fact, everyone, as you introduce yourself, please briefly describe your personal definition of fashion.

I’ll go first. My name is Rebekah. I am the daughter slash sister of the podcast. And I would say my personal style. My personal fashion could be summed up as possibly rainbow unicorn or, or neon, uh, neon throw up, neon vomit. Is that too much? Neon vomit? Martian vomit? It looks like, you know, the happy, um, the, the way that a club, like a nightclub would be shown in like a children’s cartoon, like that is my fashion.

My favorite pair of glasses just has like every color of the rainbow. Um, on it. And, uh, people make fun of me. I, I like to be technicolor. You know what I’m saying? If you’re not technicolor, are you trying? 

[00:02:02] Tim: Oh, wow. Well, my name is Tim. I am the husband and dad of This runway of characters. 

[00:02:10] Rebekah: Oh my goodness. We have come up with every different way to describe our group.

That’s a new one and I’m impressed. Not 

[00:02:16] Tim: every way. There’s still more. There’s still more. There’s still more to come. Um, and my personal definition of fashion. Um, I, I like to wear things that make me feel good. And I, I’m over 60, but I don’t like to dress like it’s traditional over 60, where everybody would look at it and say, Oh, that looks like my great grandpa.

Um, so I don’t try to dress like an 18 year old, but I try to be careful. 

[00:02:45] Rebekah: Cue mom talking about how what you wear makes her feel good. I was going to 

[00:02:49] Donna: say he dresses hot, but 

you stole 

it. Oh, well, since I’ve been put on the spot now, uh, my name is Donna and I am the wife and mom. Of this collection of fashion journalists.

[00:03:08] Rebekah: Wow. That is one title that I should never hold. No one should ever let me write about fashion. I 

[00:03:13] Donna: think the four of us together make a complete collection though. Well, I really do. So my personal definition of fashion, I’ve tried to think of something really funny, but honestly, I want clothes that are comfortable on me.

I don’t like clothes that fit tightly. I know there I’m, I am a, uh, a heavy person. I am overweight. And I see so many people out in public who wear clothing that fits them tightly. Now, that’s not really a judgment because some people, they look good in the clothing, they fit them well. I have never been able to deal with that personally.

So anyway, I want my clothes to be comfortable. Um, I try not to wear things that are just huge like a big bag hanging on me either. Uh, yeah, tents. I did have a a big moo moo in college though. We talked about that. 

[00:04:07] Rebekah: I’m pretty sure that that’s the thing in college that was described as your I gave up on life today outfit.

So I don’t know if I’d brag about that. 

[00:04:13] Donna: Yes, but I like comfortable clothes. I also like colorful clothes and I like to put things together that I want them to match And I hope they match and thankfully Tim has an amazing fashion sense So I will often go to him in the morning before I leave for work and go, does this work, be honest with me.

And it’s funny because before he says a word, I can see in his eyes, if I have something on that really probably would not go together. And I do work in a, a, a decent sized corporation at their headquarters. So I kind of need to have my clothes, you know, somewhat match, I guess. 

[00:04:56] Rebekah: I will defend dad and say you are particularly trendy most of the time hugely like I know you kind of were like I like to be comfortable But I feel like you are like you wear some good vests You have a lot of like suits and things that you wear for yesterday.

[00:05:12] Josiah: Yeah, like a Hunger Games A dystopian, cool looking sci fi vest on. 

[00:05:18] Rebekah: It legit looked like something out of like, the fashion for, you know, songbirds and snakes. Yeah. Like, that was pretty cool. 

[00:05:24] Donna: We should put a picture of him on our Discord for our Discord viewers. 

[00:05:28] Rebekah: Oh, that’s a great idea. I like that. 

[00:05:29] Donna: I guess we could put a family picture on.

Oh, yeah. 

[00:05:32] Rebekah: Yeah, he’s wearing it in the family pictures that I demanded we take yesterday. Very bossily, actually. 

[00:05:37] Josiah: You love being bossy. I’m Josiah. 

[00:05:39] Rebekah: I was bragging about it. I wasn’t saying it’s a bad thing. I’m 

[00:05:42] Josiah: clearly the brother of Rebekah and the son of Tim and Donna. Clearly. Clearly. You can see me with your own two eyes right now, this very second.

And as you can see, my general theory on fashion is you have to balance, you have to balance two things, two opposing things, whether it be Pattern and solid, dark and light, crazy and not so crazy. You just got to balance two things and then it’ll be daisies, not pushing up daisies. It’ll be gravy. Let’s say that balance equals brown pepper gravy.

[00:06:27] Donna: Oh, 

[00:06:28] Josiah: wow. 

[00:06:29] Donna: So now that you have a little bit of insight into our fashion sense, it’s just eclectic if I. Listen to everybody appropriately. I’m going to tell you a little bit about this book. The Devil Wears Prada follows the post college life of Andrea, or Andy to her friends, as she embarks on her first big girl job as an assistant for the editor in chief of Runway Magazine.

The famous Miranda Priestly. As an aspiring journalist, though not so much a fashion obsessed one, Andy takes the job after learning that just one year of it would allow her to skip several years of entry level work in publishing. And hopefully. Walter and her writing gig soon afterwards, but she learns the hard way that it won’t be as simple as just a year since Miranda, the titular devil of the piece is the most demanding boss a person might imagine.

Throughout her tenure at Runway, Andy both learns how to do her job excellently and finds herself changing as a person, none of which is missed by her family, her best friend, and long term boyfriend. However, she is unable to complete her first year after learning that her choices make Miranda Priestly see some of her younger self in Andy, driving her to leave her job during a trip with Miranda to Paris.

This brief tenure does lead to what Andrea hoped for in the form of the start of her dream career, even if it cost her a boyfriend along the way. 

[00:08:08] Rebekah: Indeed. Um, and I will say, in terms of the pronunciation of her name, I don’t know that we’re supposed to know if it’s Andrea, or Andrea, or Andrea, because Yeah, they say it all.

Miranda Priestly says it multiple ways and Emily says it multiple ways. And anyway, I just call her Andy because that feels faster, easier, if you will. Um, so I wanted to organize our changes differently than what we do most of the time, because I think that if you hear the changes to the plot, they will make more sense if you know, How they really shifted a lot of these characters, um, when they transition this from book to film.

And so I’m gonna start with Andy. So in the book, Andy is pretty average, which, you know, you get from the film, but she’s not really as unfashionable as they show, uh, her character in the film. I noticed this because she was. in the book, she was noting designer names that she was familiar with. She was putting outfits together in a way that she knew was fashionable.

And the only reason she showed up with like such bad clothes is because most of her clothes were like, not at the place she was staying. It wasn’t, I’m just homely. And like, honestly, they make her very homely at the beginning. Um, she wears like the tiniest bit of makeup, but it’s very clear she has no opinion or care for matching things or making herself look super nice or whatever.

Um, they also comment that she’s not fat during her first week in the office. And in the movie, there’s like, yeah, there’s this ongoing like joke about how she’s the fat girl because she’s a size six and you know, two is four and zero is the new 

[00:09:51] Tim: two. Yeah. We just don’t have anything in your side. Yeah.

[00:09:55] Donna: It’s so ridiculous. Um. I did think this reminded me, that scene reminded me of Miss Congeniality. Yes. And how they took her in and they go through this whole montage about all this, the waxing and the stripping and the, the hair and all they’re doing. And then she walks out and she looks like, Oh, Sander Bullock, by the way.

So hot. Um, but also I came across something in, when I was looking through trivia stuff, That Anne Hathaway did go from a six to a four while they were filming. 

[00:10:27] Rebekah: That is hilarious. So I think 

[00:10:28] Donna: that’s just crazy because That’s I can’t even get that. 

[00:10:32] Rebekah: Well, another thing they changed about her that I, uh, I’m very glad was different in the film is that her book character is quite a bit more judgmental of people.

Now we’re hearing her inner monologue in the film. Obviously we’re not seeing that, but she mocks people with Southern accents over and over. And I had to re listen to it and Google it because I, Assumed I heard it wrong. I listened to this audiobook and she actually used kind of a rude I don’t know if it’s technically a like racist term But I would hazard a guess that it’s pretty darn close if it’s not officially a racist Term for two twins that she knew in college that were from Japan So they changed her to be a lot more I would say likable and a little more Let’s say daft in the movie.

I think so that you can kind of Sympathize with her. 

[00:11:21] Josiah: She was quite elitist in the book. 

[00:11:23] Rebekah: Yes 

[00:11:24] Josiah: I mean the the sheer fact that her dream is to write for the New Yorker is a is elitist in itself Yeah, but I think she referred to some publication, like Newsweek or The Economist. Some middle of the road, some would, some would call that it left leaning.

She was like, it’s too conservative. Oh my god. Something like, something so insufferable. Some New York City publication. I guess it is 20 years ago and things have changed. I don’t even know what conservative is, 20 years ago. Yeah. But, she is quite elitist in a lot of ways. I couldn’t believe how much she made fun of her sister and brother in law for being southern.

[00:12:04] Rebekah: Like, made fun, like it was mean. Yeah. 

[00:12:07] Josiah: Oh yeah, people who are Southern are disgusting 

[00:12:10] Rebekah: animals. That’s, I mean, that’s like very close to how she phrased it. 

[00:12:16] Tim: I’m glad that they made some changes to that. Another change that, that um, was different from the book, the boyfriend character, Alex in the book, Nate in the film.

Not sure why that change was made, the name change. Why was this necessary? The character has changed quite a bit from book to film. Usually you don’t want two characters. 

[00:12:37] Josiah: Named, whose names begin with the same letter. So Alex and Andy would have been wrong. It was incorrect in the book. Yeah, it was, it was a 

[00:12:45] Tim: bad choice.

Well, it’s a little easier in the visual medium to, to remember people’s names, I think, than it is in a book. So it was probably a more egregious in the book. 

[00:12:57] Donna: Yes. 

[00:12:57] Tim: But in the book, Alex is an elementary school teacher who never raises his voice. He’s almost endlessly understanding. Uh, he also frequents his family’s house to babysit his younger sibling.

Uh, Nate, on the other hand, in the film, is a little spicier and unpredictable. He’s a chef in New York City, or an aspiring chef, who pretty quickly gets totally annoyed with Andy’s job from the start. I personally thought he was a much whinier character in the film. 

[00:13:32] Rebekah: They kind of reversed their roles a little.

Yeah, 

[00:13:34] Tim: I liked, I liked him in the book more. He was very understanding, he was very kind, always out going. He was such a superhero. And he was just, he was just as self centered. And I made a, I made a comment to your mom after we finished listening to it. And, you know, he was so bothered by the fact that Andy was going, you know, that she’d spent so much time on her job and, you know, she forgot all of the other people because she had to be at her job so much.

And in the film, the last thing that they learn is, oh, he’s going to be this, be the sous chef, the number two in charge. at a fancy, fancy restaurant in another city that they’re moving to. And I’m thinking, that’s exactly the same thing. That he’s moving to. 

[00:14:17] Rebekah: He’s Yeah. They broke up. That he, he moved. He stayed.

[00:14:21] Tim: Even in the film? Mm 

[00:14:22] Rebekah: hmm. Okay. In the film, that’s what happened. In the book, it’s very different. He’s a school teacher, like you said. Right. And he doesn’t Yeah, we’ll talk about that at the end. But I remember thinking, when we finish it all up, I was like, why would that person ever have dated the person Andy was written to be in the book?

Like, she literally made a point to say he wouldn’t even raise his voice when she did things that he should have been upset about, you know? 

[00:14:47] Josiah: Yeah, he was comically good. He was an angel in the book. And, not that that doesn’t really make a great character, but it makes a very likable character. It doesn’t make a deep character.

[00:14:59] Tim: Well, it, it pushed it so that at the end, when he finally makes the choices that he makes. You’re sad to see him go. Quite frankly, I didn’t have a problem if, if Nate from the film went elsewhere. Yep. 

[00:15:16] Donna: Don’t say yep. I disagree with that. Really? I think that they had their thing going. She was kind of, she was pretty.

He thought she was pretty, but she was kind of plain. She wasn’t a threat. To, to him, maybe that’s part of the, maybe that’s part of the issue. I don’t know, but I’ve, I saw him as, Oh no, my kind of safe, plain girl that I, I love what’s happened to her. She’s become stylish and snooty. Like I didn’t see him as, and I know we had, Tim and I talked about this briefly and we tried not to get into it far before we did the podcast.

But I don’t know. I mean, I follow what you’re saying. I’m not, I don’t think you’re completely off board with it. I guess I just didn’t see it. I saw it as him feeling like he was losing her and he didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know how else to react. And maybe, That’s where your thoughts come from because his reaction was kind of, it was, I can see it was kind of whiny.

[00:16:27] Rebekah: Maybe part of why I was annoyed by it is because he was meanest to her when she was in the middle of being beat down by Miranda and then other people. And it was just like piling on rather than saying, Hey, I said, 12 months was, we could do it. Like, I will put up with whatever, I know, like, that this is what it, like, he couldn’t just accept that it was a temporary thing with, like, an end date stamped on.

Like, he had to keep jabbing at her. 

[00:16:55] Donna: And it was a little, teeny bit frustrating for me. I know it was intended to be cute in the film, uh, a couple of different times when he was kind of pouty and looking down and I kind of, I really just thought about this actually, she, her response was, but look at what I have on underneath this, you don’t like this, how about this, how about this?

And it’s, I’m just thinking about that now. Wow. Not the way that we want girls. To go about resolving their problems with their friends. Yeah, there were a few 

[00:17:30] Josiah: some, there were a few early 2000s isms in my estimation. Oh yeah. I was surprised at how dated the movie was in just a couple ways. And one of them, although I think it’s very feminist in a lot of ways, it’s empowering to women.

I thought that there was, Uh, some more objectification by the camera 

[00:17:55] Rebekah: than 

[00:17:55] Josiah: would be in a modern movie. 

[00:17:56] Rebekah: Uh, yeah. When we first started watching the film, Josh was like, oh, oh, and like one of the kids in our house, like, come watch this. You’ve never seen it. It’s really funny. And the first scene is like girls putting on like clothes and they are, it is very objectively Like it’s objectifying Lee shot.

So yeah, I’m not a particular, I’m, I’m not a huge fan of that. Kind of glad that that’s been less, uh, in, in style lately, but 

[00:18:23] Josiah: we haven’t talked about Lily yet. Andy’s best friend, Lily, very minor character in the film. Now that we’re mentioning her, it’s getting my juices flowing. The last time we see her is at the art gallery.

[00:18:37] Rebekah: Wow. They had a fight. 

[00:18:38] Josiah: Well, let me, let me think about this from the beginning. She was in, in the beginning of the film, she was enthusiastic about Andy’s job, especially when there was a free purse involved. Yes, but she got upset when she saw Christian, the rich writer, kind of rich guy, and Andy share an intimate moment during the gallery opening.

She calls Andy out on it. In the film, she seems to run some sort of art gallery. In the book, she is a forever college student. She’s, I guess, getting a graduate, a master’s degree in Russian literature, was it? 

[00:19:15] Rebekah: Yeah, something that’s completely useless is how it’s described. I 

[00:19:17] Josiah: thought it was a doctorate. It might’ve been a doctor.

Possibly. She’s a forever college student. She and Andy have been friends since childhood. Book Lily is basically on her own with just a very old grandmother, his family and a very serious alcohol problem, which becomes honestly way too important of a plot point for my taste. Oh 

[00:19:37] Rebekah: man. I’m excited to hear what you have to say about that when we get there.

[00:19:40] Josiah: Lily is very anti monogamy. Oh. She’s anti monogamy and actively encouraged. Andy to hook up with Christian in the book. Yeah, that threw me. Oh, I was disgusted. When she and Alex, yeah, there was Andy and Alex in the book. When she and Alex were not on a break. Cause in the, we’ll talk about, Andy and Christian in a little bit, but the stuff they did together, the like major stuff they did together was when Andy and Alex, Andy and Nate in the film were on a break.

And in the book, Lily was encouraging stuff to happen before they had semi broken up. 

[00:20:21] Rebekah: Andy was, I think the one who said, don’t you like Alex? And she’s like, yeah, but Who cares? You should just sleep with everyone. It was, uh, it was quite an interesting Yeah. Like, I think that was one of the things reading the book that I was like, wow, you are making Lily out to be Really unlikable.

Just very unlikable as a character. 

[00:20:39] Tim: I have a question. Yeah. When, uh, when was Friends was 94 94 to 04. Okay. So it was in the midst. It was fairly temporary. And I always felt like the way that the way that relationships were presented on friends, although it’s extremely funny and all of those things, every relationship was, well, you could have one date without sex.

Maybe, 

[00:21:06] Rebekah: but 

[00:21:06] Tim: you had, you had to be sexually active. It was like wild to even 

[00:21:10] Rebekah: suggest that that’s not what you do. I wonder a 

[00:21:13] Tim: strange way for me. 

[00:21:14] Josiah: I don’t think any of us are friends, super fans, but we remember any polyamory polygamy. No, I’ve seen the whole series a couple of times. Do you think there was any, any open relationships or anything like that?

[00:21:28] Donna: Joey and Chandler, I mean, they got, uh, The guys more than the girls, they would joke about, you know, dating two girls at a time. And Chandler tried one time, I think to date two to separate people, but it, it killed him emotionally. He couldn’t do it. I 

[00:21:43] Rebekah: don’t remember the specifics, but I also feel like friends did have at least one plot point that was about how someone found out somebody was married that they were seeing, or there was something about the potential of hooking up with somebody married and they like, actively were like, you cannot do that.

That’s terrible. Like they were not for it. So it went beyond even like the way they displayed things. 

[00:22:06] Josiah: Okay. Well, that basically answers my question. Give some context to when devil wears Prada was written. 

[00:22:13] Donna: There is a fourth person that they add in the film to Andy’s friend group. So, um, it was a kind of an effeminate guy named Doug, I think several years, not too in, in the not too distant past.

I would have said Doug was probably metrosexual, like he, he wanted to, I don’t even know exactly how to describe it. He knew the designer names, he like, he loved her job. He knew way more than, uh, than Andy did. Uh, Lily knew, like Lily recognized names in the film too. But he was like on it as soon as she would say anything, Oh, you met so and so, or, Oh, there was this person or, Oh my gosh, that’s, I love that product, that kind of thing.

Um, I kind of got the impression they were using Doug as a, as a, uh, is an amalgamation. Is that the right word? 

[00:23:06] Josiah: Sure. 

[00:23:07] Donna: Of. A couple of people in the book that Andy encountered at Runway and I think they were kind of trying to fill a space in there because he was never with Lily. So when, when the four of them went out together.

In the film, they weren’t, they weren’t two couples. It was definitely a friend, but, um, I thought Doug was okay. He was quirky. They didn’t really do anything with him. I guess he was like a throwaway person. He was 

[00:23:35] Rebekah: definitely just like a prop piece in some ways. But here’s what I think. If you watch back carefully on screen, Nate and Lily.

So in the book, Nate and Lily are also very good friends. Like he does a lot of favors for her. Like they’re, you know, they’re close in the film. The people they cast for Nate and Lily have zero chemistry together. I think Doug was literally there as glue because it was clear that if you just put Nate and Lily’s characters at a table, they would look like two people who did not want to be at the same table.

[00:24:07] Donna: It looked this. Uh, one of y’all looked this up. I think he and Lily played love interests in another movie. I’m almost positive I read that. In, in some trivia. 

[00:24:19] Tim: Boy, that would be awkward. 

[00:24:20] Donna: Yeah. 

[00:24:21] Tim: Well, there is another change in the characterization. Andy’s family is mostly eliminated from the film. In the book, her parents seem to be happily married and she has a sister who married a man from Texas and has a baby on the way.

Andrea and her father also have a sweet habit of playing Scrabble on the floor when she comes to visit, which none of which is in the film. 

[00:24:45] Josiah: It was so humanizing. About the Scrabble and it also helped me relate because we love word games. We love those sorts of family games and we we got a deluxe edition of Scrabble around the time we moved to South Carolina.

That was relatable and they did take that out of the film. They took her family. I think you have. Enough with the friends for reality to be the normalcy for Andy. I don’t think you also need the family and the dad is in one scene. I think that was an okay change to remove the family, but it does change a lot of dynamics.

[00:25:26] Rebekah: Adrian Grenier, who is the guy who played Nate, I did not find anything where him and Tracy Thomas, the actress who played Lily’s character, were in a different film together. Uh, I did find a very interesting article from this year. Um, apparently, Adrian Grenier, the actor, went from open and polyamorous as a very out, like, Hollywood liberal, hated conservatives, like, lived godlessly, Uh, bro found God and now lives on a ranch in Texas, married and glad to know the Lord.

[00:26:02] Tim: Praise the Lord. That’s 

[00:26:03] Rebekah: so random. 

[00:26:04] Tim: That’s awesome. That’s 

[00:26:05] Rebekah: cool. I’m glad I found it. I just, that’s wild. I also do want to comment that I really like Andy’s sister in the book and I understand why they cut her out, but it was a little bit of a loss for me in terms of her family character stuff being changed.

[00:26:20] Josiah: With the sister having a baby, I thought that that was a very More so than maybe her parents being, oh, just another source of guilt. The fact that she hadn’t seen her newborn nephew, I did think, gave Andy an interesting choice that revealed her character. Yeah. Of, wow, you really have your priorities in the very wrong place.

Woo, 

[00:26:44] Rebekah: it’s truth. Okay, so let’s move on to the characters at Runway. There’s a few of these. Uh, in the book, Emily is not British. In the film Uh, she is British, and honestly, is, wait, is Emily, Emily Blunt British? Yes, 

[00:26:59] Tim: yes, she is British. 

[00:27:00] Rebekah: My guess is that part of that was because it kind of backed up the posh nature of who she was supposed to be, and it’s her natural accent, so why make it harder?

Um. 

[00:27:09] Josiah: And Miranda. Is no longer British, 

[00:27:13] Rebekah: right? Miranda is British in the book, but not the film. 

[00:27:16] Josiah: Yes. Um, speaking 

[00:27:17] Rebekah: of Miranda, Miranda Priestly of the book is a completely unsympathetic character and she has zero redeeming qualities. So, okay. For instance, this is one of the things that was most difficult for me when they adapted this.

In the film, she’s presented as unreasonable, demanding, all the same. But she’s depicted as a talented editor in chief who has a major impact on the world as a whole. And she’s given a few scenes, especially near the end that make you empathize with her. You watch Andrea like start to empathize with her and feel bad.

And so we’ll talk about like the plot behind that all. But I just felt like, One of the things that drove it home for me in the movie like that I liked this movie was that even the devil had some redeeming qualities that make you go man Maybe I’m like being a little harsh on her because I think she’s mean or whatever 

[00:28:11] Josiah: not biblical, but right there.

It’s very human 

[00:28:14] Rebekah: Yes But in the book, she’s awful. Like you hate her. She’s never nice. There’s never a moment like it’s just always awful. And she’s never good at 

[00:28:25] Josiah: her job either. 

[00:28:27] Rebekah: Yeah, they don’t make any big deal about that. Like. In the film, it’s, it’s a very big plot point that Miranda’s amazing at her job and she’s the only one that could do it and all of this stuff and it’s like, I did not just dislike her in the book.

I also had no reason to respect her for anything. 

[00:28:44] Tim: Didn’t the, didn’t the book though paint her as, as a person who she’s so good at her job. I mean, she is so involved with everything that happens in the magazine, and she does all of that. That’s what’s built the reputation of the magazine. I felt like that was kind of ridiculous.

It was told, not shown. Okay, 

[00:29:04] Rebekah: well. Yeah, she doesn’t demonstrate it in the book. There’s never a scene. In the movie, she does. 

[00:29:08] Josiah: The Cerulean scene, or the council scene in the film with, with Nigel. And, uh, when Emily Blunt comes in. With a cold, there’s never any scenes like that where she, where she’s shown in the book to be competent.

Roger. So yes, we, we are told that she’s confident, which in storytelling doesn’t count. 

[00:29:32] Donna: To create the character of Miranda, and this fascinates me when going back to, I want to know why people think the way they do, but Meryl Streep drew from two sources to create this character. One, she, she likened her appearance to To that of the now 93 year old at the time the movie came out, she was 85, the 93 year old model, Carmen del orifice, um, she’s famous for this trademark white hair and I grabbed a picture to kind of get an idea of, of this lady and I saw her picture as a model and she’s in her eighties in this, in this Photo I have and she has this incredible beautiful shiny white hair.

Oh, she’s gorgeous. And it’s yeah She she’s lovely and then the elegant authority of christine lagarde Who’s the president of the european central bank? So that’s where she took the appearance from and then her demeanor She got which this is so random compared to the first two She took her demeanor for miranda You From the quiet, calm, icy voice of Clint Eastwood running a movie set.

Which is quite impressive. 

[00:30:49] Tim: We talked about him when we were doing The Shining. But he’s very, he’s very quiet and very authoritative. Um, he doesn’t, I don’t think he raises his voice. 

[00:30:58] Rebekah: Yeah. Yeah. I think that the again movie Miranda in a different way than the book just did not give me any. I, I didn’t love her, but I respected her and then I could empathize with her.

And I think making her older was one reason that I felt like I could respect her a little bit because I feel like if it was like somebody yelling at Andy who looked like she was barely older than Andy, Like when Emily does it, Emily just feels kind of like a rude person, like a word I don’t say, but like when Miranda did it, I’m like, well, you’ve gotten yourself somewhere with your life.

Like 

[00:31:33] Josiah: in the book, does it explicitly say that Miranda is not 40 yet? She’s in 

[00:31:37] Rebekah: her late thirties. That 

[00:31:39] Josiah: is insane to me. 

[00:31:40] Rebekah: Yeah. You’re in your mid thirties. I am 36. I am Miranda Priestly in the book. Like I am her age. So weird. It’s wild. 

[00:31:48] Tim: You’ve risen to the point where you are the most respected name in the fashion industry around the world.

That, that seems quite a stretch at that age. 

[00:32:00] Rebekah: It was one of the ways they showed without, or they told without showing that Miranda was so respected is because she reached the pinnacle of her career at such a young age. Like, it was very impressive. 

[00:32:12] Josiah: Miranda also has that obsession with the specific, you know, White scarf.

It’s these Hermes scarfs. She has an obsession made by this famous designer But they’re now out of production and there’s this ongoing concern and I did like this in the book. It was funny that The several hundred scarves that they bought years ago, when they were going out of production, they bought the entire warehouse full.

Miranda will still eventually run out because she uses these scarves constantly. She’s always has one on, but she discards them like they’re pieces of tissue. She’ll leave them all sorts of places. She’ll throw them out. She’ll get stuff on them, but usually she’ll just leave them in a corner, in a car, in 

[00:32:55] Rebekah: I do, I do think the scarf thing is a really funny little ongoing subplot and like, you know, Andy muses at one point that like she did the math specifically because she wanted to make sure that she was not in her year long tenure when Miranda runs out.

So she averaged out like how many she throws away and loses all the time. 

[00:33:16] Josiah: And she says, Oh, good. Thank goodness. It’ll be in like two or three years. Exactly. 

[00:33:21] Rebekah: And it was funny because it also reminds me of how in the book she talked about, like there was this particular, like very dainty, tiny handbag that Miranda had been gifted by a designer.

That’s worth like 30 grand or some ridiculous amount of money. And she kept filling it with way more stuff than it could fit. And the beaded parts of it kept breaking. And like Andy kept having to send it back to someone. And it’s like, honestly, Miranda in the film. Respects the things that she has like Miranda of the film would never have deigned to misuse something like that And I think that’s another thing.

It’s like she seems Wasteful not in a in a good like not in an interesting way in the book just in an annoying way 

[00:34:02] Tim: in the film They they do seem to show the the smallest part of that by the way, she throws her clothes Andy’s desk, but she throws it on the desk of the person that she thinks is the lowest in the office.

[00:34:16] Donna: Yeah. 

[00:34:17] Tim: Alongside Miranda, 

[00:34:19] Josiah: she does have a husband in both book and film, but they are completely different. 

[00:34:24] Rebekah: Yep. 

[00:34:25] Josiah: The film, Steven, is a movie. Is shown as a 50 something serious person, rarely interact, who rarely interacts with Miranda or her assistants on screen. And there’s a little bit of drama with him where his actions actually affect the themes and plot of the movie.

Unlike in the book, where Miranda’s husband was Affectionately named B Dad, standing for blind, deaf, and dumb for his never ending optimism and flirtatious nature with Miranda. He also came by the office to choose an assistant to bother and flirt with. I thought that was so uncomfortable in the book, how it, I feel like it was portrayed as, Oh, he’s so fangless.

He’s so fun. Yeah, I think that’s, 

[00:35:10] Rebekah: I think that’s one of the early 2000 isms that, like, you see a lot is, like, we would just joke a lot about guys who were, like, vaguely predatory but that you weren’t really afraid of. And that’s not something I would say we’d see, like, if you remade this movie right now, you would not make it with a character like that.

And even the movie didn’t use that as a person. So yeah, I’m kind of glad that, that it didn’t go that direction. Um, we had just a couple of setting changes too that I wanted to cover before we get into the plot. In the film, 

[00:35:42] Donna: Andy and Nate share an apartment. And that’s the setting for multiple scenes of them together.

But the book, Andy lives in a couple of different apartments, including with Lily and never with her boyfriend, Nate. And that particular thing, when they had her in the book, Move in with those, uh, with the two girls. Yeah. That were, um, some medical students of some kind. I believe that’s right. Again, they were kind of like throwaway characters.

[00:36:12] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[00:36:13] Donna: Did anything happen with them? 

[00:36:15] Rebekah: I don’t, the two girls were meaningless, like they weren’t used, but I think the reason they did it is because in the book It also is used as a subplot to further like Andy not caring enough for Lily’s needs and like really going and then they’re like, Oh, we’re going to get an apartment together and then Lily has to go and kind of seek out the apartment and do all the work.

So I think that’s how it worked. Also, I feel like her not living with. Uh, her boyfriend in the book made them, it, it drove home the point that they were like just barely out of college in the film. They say she’s just out of college, but they really seem like they’re in their mid to late twenties in terms of like they’re living together, like things are pretty serious.

So stuff like that, I 

[00:36:58] Donna: mean, Lily is a, and she’s an artist. In the film and is able to show at a gallery. So, I mean, they can’t just be 22 or 23, which is fine. That’s fine. 

[00:37:10] Josiah: Another setting change that I’m thinking of is about Andy’s parents living in Ohio, according to the film in the book, they live much closer to NYC.

Andy even lives with them briefly at the start of the story. She has to scramble to find a place to live at the beginning. They. They offer her a job and say, Hey, can you come in like tomorrow? Right. No, so sorry. I don’t think I can come in that early. Oh, okay. Well, Monday will work. Okay. Well, that’s still too soon.

So she gets like 10 days at the end of this negotiation. 

[00:37:44] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[00:37:44] Josiah: To find a place to live. And during those 10 days of looking for a place she lives with. Her parents, 

[00:37:51] Rebekah: which by the way, I know this is just a side note to what you’re trying to say, but how wild is it that you like get a job when you’re desperately looking for a job?

And they’re like, can you come in right away? And you’re like, unrelatable 

[00:38:03] Josiah: to me. 

[00:38:04] Rebekah: Yeah. You’re like, um, no, I’m sorry. I have to spend 10 days looking for a place to live. I’m like, you were able to show up for the interview at a moment’s notice. You don’t live across the country. What are you talking about?

Yeah. Anyway, continue. I’m sorry. 

[00:38:19] Josiah: Well, I guess all of that to say omitting her parents from the film makes a little more sense if you’re going to cut needing to find a place, being a plot point and everything where Andy already lives in the city. Right. Sort of thing. 

[00:38:34] Tim: I think it also kind of having the parents live in Ohio in the film gave them an excuse for not having them there, but it also made her life very difficult.

Metropolitan 

[00:38:45] Donna: because 

[00:38:46] Tim: her parents were probably, probably very rural. They lived in Ohio, you know, yeah, 

[00:38:51] Josiah: instead of rural, instead of a suburb of New York city, which was in the book, maybe, maybe an hour or two away from NYC, but still a suburb of NYC to have them live in Ohio, I think. Kind of what I was saying with her friends earlier in the film, it does make them more normal, so that Runway is more of a cartoon.

[00:39:12] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[00:39:12] Josiah: It’s a magical place, whether that magic is good or bad. 

[00:39:15] Rebekah: Yeah. Uh, okay, so now that you have kind of the bedrock foundation of the vastness of the changes to, like, who these characters are, let’s talk about what they change in the plot and the timeline. Okay. 

[00:39:29] Tim: Alrighty, well, the film begins with a montage of many runway girls getting ready for the day, interspersed with Andrea’s more average girl habits.

She’s already been sent for an interview at the magazine, which is supposed to happen that day. The book starts with a scene from the middle of her job working for Miranda, then backs up to describe a trip that she and Alex took to India, during which she developed dysentery, lost quite a bit of weight.

She was still recovering when she was called in for the interview, and so she wasn’t really the fat girl. She’d lost a good bit of weight at that point. Yeah, that’s part of why 

[00:40:07] Rebekah: they didn’t, they commented on the fact she’s not fat. It’s like, well, 20 pounds due to dysentery. 

[00:40:13] Donna: Yes. I totally forgot that. 

[00:40:15] Rebekah: Yeah.

I thought it was interesting to get the backstory of like, here’s something that Alex and I were doing. And she like jokes about him, like being with her in the hospital. This is where you immediately begin to like her boyfriend. And you’re like, Oh my gosh, like these so sweet. She’s like, please don’t leave me.

And he just laughs as she has, you know, uncomfortable and terrible bowel movements right in front of it. Like, it’s this very like weirdly charming moment. And There’s, it was, it was more of a book beginning. Um, I thought the movie beginning was pretty solid, though. I, like I said, I don’t like the objectification of women in, in film, obviously.

But, I thought it was clever to kind of show the difference between Runway and Andrea, like, her girl versus the Runway girl. And then immediately, like, just jump right into, okay, I’m interviewing. 

[00:41:02] Tim: I think that’s the advantage of the visual media. You can take those plot points where Andy’s talking forever, forever.

in the book about how, what the culture of runway is and all those skinny little girls and what they do. And you can, you can take 30 seconds to, to a minute in a montage and you get it. Yeah. You, you see the difference and you know it, you don’t have to force the point, but it’s still there. It’s not left out.

[00:41:29] Donna: Well, speaking as a 60 year old who hasn’t worn a heel on her shoe, For a very long time, unless I have tennis shoes with a really good soul on them, I just kept looking at it going, why, why would you do that to your back and your legs every day? And I would watch him run across the streets of New York and Andy running back and forth.

And I’m like, Oh, stop it. Just get over yourself. Put tennis shoes on. Not worth it. Cannot. Yeah. No, thank you. But you know, I tried to warn you at the beginning of the podcast with my fashion sense. So, well, in the movie, Miranda comes in during Andy’s interview. Emily makes comment that she’s hired multiple assistants since being promoted to her position, but Miranda has sacked them both.

In the book, though, Miranda’s on a six week vacation that she takes every year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. She doesn’t meet Andy for several weeks, although they do speak on the phone regularly. This leads to Andy thinking at least for a few weeks the job will be bearable. Although she has a feeling that it is, she gets the feeling after a bit, that it is a house of cards and she’s the first person hired to fill Emily’s spot after Emily’s promoted to first assistant.

I did like the fact that they immediately put her and Miranda together. I think again, To Tim’s last point about what you can do in a book and what you can do in a movie. I think it was more effective that she meets Miranda right off the bat. Oh yeah. Is immediately judged. And she kind of looks her up and down and that kind of thing.

Um, and I think there’s a line there where she says, and you’ve never heard of me and you’ve never read Runway. She’s like, no. And then she says, and you have no fashion sense. And Andy says, well, I wouldn’t say you 

[00:43:34] Rebekah: consider that wasn’t a question. Yeah, 

[00:43:38] Donna: that’s right. Um, so I did, I did like the film remake of this because one, it was more effective visually, but it gets you started right from the beginning, seeing their relationship.

[00:43:52] Rebekah: I think the book did this in the fact that. The first scene of the book is actually an interaction between Miranda or she’s like on the street like trying to chase down some errand or whatever. And then you jump back and the very book normal thing you jump back and then you kind of get to understand why everything is happening the way that it is.

Um, but yeah, I think the. It worked in the book in my opinion to have there be this like lead up to Miranda coming back into the office like I and like I thought that worked, but I again loved that they did not do that in the film. Okay, so one of the things that made me. Love this film when it first started was after Miranda’s been kind of rude to Emily and Andy, especially at the very beginning you immediately have this opportunity to develop some respect for her character Like I said before I don’t have any respect for her in the book and this comes in the form of the cerulean scene So this is like Andy’s second day or first day of work and she’s in the office, she’s taking notes during some kind of like an accessories run through and they’re showing Miranda two different belts that are kind of some shade of teal and Andy kind of snickers and they all stare at her.

And Miranda’s like, do you have, is something, I think she says is something funny and Andy goes, uh, those two belts look exactly the same to me. 

[00:45:15] Donna: And so 

[00:45:15] Rebekah: Miranda like looks her up and down and she says something snide, but then explains like Andy, the sweater that you’re wearing. The shade is called cerulean and then she goes through this whole diatribe of all of these designers who made the cerulean color popular until it finally ended up in the bottom of a bin at some discount store where Andy plucked it out, you know, and it’s like, it’s very like disdainful in certain ways, but it’s the first chance that you see, oh my, Miranda Priestly is like changing things In the world, and I kept waiting for that in the book and was so bummed that there’s never anything like that.

[00:45:55] Josiah: Yeah. Yeah. And another thing that that scene illustrates in the film is that Andy thinks she’s above it all. And when, even if not on purpose, she is participating in what Miranda Priestley and people like her are doing now. Yes. So it. It reveals to her in a way that she doesn’t necessarily get in the book as much, that she is a part of this world, even in not, even in trying not to be, she has to take part in fashion in some way.

It grounds her, it humanizes her, it helps her realize that, Oh, I’m not above all of these people here. Which, through kind of the end of the book, she thinks she is. Thanks. 

[00:46:45] Rebekah: Yeah, she never really gets that sense of like, Oh, this affects me. 

[00:46:49] Tim: I loved, I loved the Cerulean scene. I thought it was, it was very effective.

I liked the way that it showed Miranda and her knowledge of that and how, how fashion trickles down. She said, you know, that stuff about the designers that introduced that color, you’re wearing this blue sweater and you’re, you think you’re above it all. You look down on everybody for all of this, but that’s actually cerulean blue and this is how it came to be.

I loved all of that. I thought it was, I thought it was really good. And it helps the audience too, I think. understand that although we can look at those things in fashion and size two or size zero model and things that, you know, could never work. Those are things that trickle down to, you know, we go to the store and find this stuff, you know, whether we shop at Walmart or, you know, Dollar General, eventually we find, we find those things.

Um, and that’s because they were part of fashion. And so I think that’s a, I think that’s a really good addition to the movie. 

[00:47:54] Rebekah: Me too. 

[00:47:54] Tim: Yeah. It also, 

[00:47:55] Donna: it also establishes. Kind of the beginning of Andy looking at things a little differently. She’s still not happy with Miranda all the way through and she still thinks she’s very Demanding and can be so rude, but not long after that scene She’s in a scene with her friends with Nate and Lily and Doug and she has some stuff That were leftover gifts.

That’s the one mention of things Miranda gets that she didn’t want. And she pulls out all these designer things, which Lily and Doug kind of drool over and Nate’s not that thrilled about it, but it begins to turn. Her personality begins to turn there and I think it was great writing. 

[00:48:41] Rebekah: After that conversation, her hair starts looking less frizzy.

She starts wearing more 

[00:48:45] Tim: mascara. If I’m going to do this job, I do need to take it seriously. 

[00:48:50] Rebekah: And then obviously she has more of that revelation later, but she does rant to her boyfriend about how stupid Miranda is for saying all that. Which is funny because it also humanizes her in the film in a way because you kind of see this person that you’re empathetic towards and all of a sudden you’re like, wait, why are you ranting?

She made very good points. Like Miranda was correct. 

[00:49:11] Josiah: Yeah, we mentioned, uh, Andy’s parents earlier than living in a different place. But during the film, you do get to see Andy’s dad once he has dinner with her. And Andy’s dad mentions during that dinner that she turned down Stanford Law to become a journalist.

Her possible legal career Is not mentioned in the book book. Andy has always wanted to be a journalist specifically at the New Yorker. I even think it’s funny that they diluted, they diluted her motivation from the book to film. In the film she’s like, yeah, I’d love to work at somewhere like New Yorker or the Atlantic, whereas in the book it’s New Yorker, New Yorker, New Yorker.

[00:49:55] Rebekah: Yeah, I, I did not like this. This was one of the things in the film I thought that was just kind of a weird choice to me. Um, her dad in the book is very, like, sympathetic and kind, and he’s really nice and And kind in the, in the film, but it was like such a weird thing because it’s like, Oh, I already was kind of looking down on you because you decided you had to be a journalist despite the fact you could have gotten into Stanford law.

Also I’m much more disappointed that not only are you not being a journalist, you’re taking this stupid job in fashion that doesn’t, I don’t understand. It doesn’t mean anything. And I just, I don’t know. I think that was like a very strange choice in the book for my opinion. 

[00:50:34] Josiah: Yeah, I think it’s a weird thing in the movie.

I guess if I’m trying to justify it, I would say it gives Andy an out so that, you know, Andy did have a choice. She chose to work here. She continues to, cause she keeps saying, I don’t have a choice. I have to do this. I have to do that. And maybe in, in some regard, her having Sanford Law. As a backup, as something she turned down, just goes further to show you did have a choice, you’ve had several choices.

[00:51:11] Donna: Right. Both book and film have scenes where Andy is required to get the newest Harry Potter book for the twins. But it’s made a much bigger deal in the film. And I totally got why, but I can see what they did with the plot point, but Book Andy just has to get a few copies of the book two days before they hit shelves, whereas the film shows Andy having to chase down the unpublished manuscript.

Um, this is a further way that she connects with Christian. Who she met at a party a few days before, although he has nothing to do with the Harry Potter plot in the book. Um, and I found a little tidbit about this that the prop book that Andy takes in to Miranda’s desk and she kind of drops it on the desk because Miranda’s turned around with her back to her.

Um, they sold that in an auction and made 586 and the, the proceeds of the auction were going to supporting disadvantaged women who were transitioning into the workforce. And I thought that was fascinating because when I read 586, I thought it just seems so little for a Harry Potter and not that way. It was a prop.

Yeah. Uh, so then, then it made me think. Who would pay 596? 

[00:52:34] Rebekah: I think it’s a really cool, like, I really liked this in the film. I think it was a really cool way to solidify that with Christian. Like, and I, it was, she, Miranda was upset with her. She, she was kind of punishing 

[00:52:46] Donna: Andrea 

[00:52:47] Rebekah: at that time. And cause she said, if you can’t do it, don’t even bother coming back to work.

And finally, Andy gets to come back and have a gotcha moment. Where, for the first time, Miranda kind of seems to begin respecting her. And so, I thought that was really great in the film. 

[00:53:03] Josiah: Yes, I love seeing main characters show initiative and show that they’re good at their job. It makes them more likable.

Speaking about something that’s less likable, As part of Lily’s alcoholism subplot, Lily gets arrested in the book at one point for indecent exposure and having coital relations in a public place. None of this subplot is in the film. And I was thinking while I was listening to that part of the audiobook, Oh, she’s on the sex offender list now.

There were kids that caught her. 

[00:53:35] Rebekah: Yeah, children. Yeah, I was like I think this 

[00:53:38] Tim: was a good reduction or subtraction from the book. 

[00:53:41] Rebekah: Yeah, I read that in the book and genuinely was like, I’m sorry, what did you just say she was arrested for? I was so annoyed by that. This is another thing, like I, you know, Lily in the book was so over the top a mess all the time.

And so this happens when. Like, Andy gets one very free weekend because she’s moving into her new apartment with Lily. Miranda’s out of town. Her parents have come into town to help them move. You know, Alex shows up to help them move. All this stuff. And like, for some reason, Lily doesn’t show up. And then finally Alex corners Andy and is like, Hey, Lily was arrested.

And so then they find out why she was arrested. And I’m just like, Honestly, sitting there going, I’m sorry. So you’re not going to move in with her anymore, right? 

[00:54:30] Donna: It was like, 

[00:54:30] Rebekah: Oh my gosh, she’ll, he’s my best friend. Like this poor girl. And I’m like, no, what do you mean? Like I started it. Yeah, it, that was kind of the end of me being able to have any sympathy.

For the Lily character, uh, kind of right in the midst of all of that going on, uh, in the film, Andy traveling to Paris is a much bigger betrayal to her boyfriend, so film boyfriend Nate gets upset when he finds out, oh, she’s, you know, going to Paris after she said Emily was going, not her, and it leads to a fight because that’s when he points out, oh, you’ve changed so much, Andy, you know, However, in the book, her boyfriend Alex had gone through this excruciating process of planning a trip for he and Andy to go to a high school, I think, reunion.

It was high school or college. It high school because she just graduated. Um, she was wanting to go to this high school reunion or whatever reunion. She begged him to set this all up for weeks. He tries to surprise her by letting her know that this is what he’s done. And as he’s trying to surprise her, she was like, Miranda, you know, called her or something.

So he barely can, can like share the exciting news, whatever. Oh, I think it was, he asked her to call him at like three 30 that day. It was like really specific. I only want to talk to you for a few minutes, but I had good news I wanted to share and she doesn’t remember. And it’s like this whole thing. So then in the book right after that, like two days later, Andy agrees to go to Paris during that same weekend, which I mean, gut punch.

It just, it got me. I was so sad. And, uh, in both cases, that’s when they decide to go on a break. Although, um, in the book, Alex basically says, I went through all this stuff. You couldn’t even respect me enough to call me for me to tell you about it. And then you say yes to Miranda to go on a trip, knowing that I’ve done all this for you.

And in the film, when Nate points out how much she’s changed, it’s actually Andy who suggests that they go on a break. 

[00:56:31] Tim: I noticed that. I think this was one of those parts that, that showed Andy wasn’t a great person either. She looked down her nose at all the people in the fashion industry because they were so fake and all those things, but she was very judgmental.

And we’d mentioned that before that, that the film version, she’s not as judgmental. She’s more likable. Than those kinds of things. Well, in the, um, in the book, in the film, they, they showed different circumstances that stopped. Emily, the first assistant from going to Paris in the book, she gets so ill, she can’t leave her house and she’s diagnosed with mono.

And her doctor even has to speak directly with Miranda to assure Miranda that she cannot go. She was forbidden from leaving home and there was no way that she could travel. In the movie, however, there’s a completely different twist. Emily develops a cold that still comes to the office. It is Miranda who tells Andy that Emily is no longer the best fit, that she needs to accompany her to Fashion Week instead.

And it is now Andy’s responsibility to deliver the bad news to Emily while she’s on the phone With Andy, but before she learns about this betrayal, Emily gets hit by a taxi. 

[00:58:01] Donna: Oh my gosh, that was so 

[00:58:02] Rebekah: funny, I don’t know why it was so funny and this, this is a comedy, but it’s a dramedy. And that scene, I was like, I felt like I was watching a Three Stooges.

It was very funny. 

[00:58:12] Josiah: I like the events are a little switched around in the movie that Emily is out of commission, which leads to Miranda having to bring her. Andy to just a local New York City party, maybe a birthday party. Maybe it was Miranda. It was a 

[00:58:31] Rebekah: benefit. They called it a benefit 

[00:58:33] Josiah: as a benefit. And they had to Gary Walsh from Veep in Miranda Priestly’s ear about who all these people are.

They have to memorize all the names. And this sort of thing was in the book, but it didn’t connect to Paris like in the movie and in the movie that Andy goes to the party at the same time as Emily because Miranda’s like, she is sick and I don’t really want to trust her with all this because her mind is addled and, and maybe there’s a little bit of, but I actually do want to upset Emily, but ultimately it is Emily’s failure at that party and Andy’s success.

That leads to Miranda, quote unquote, offering Andy a Paris trip, making it, first of all, you see that Andy is good at her job, which makes her more likable. And it makes you feel for Emily because it wasn’t just a doctor told her she couldn’t come. She did mess up. And that’s very humanizing. That’s very relatable while it’s also being more sympathetic.

It’s like, oh man, it was her doing it. It was her. Undoing, her own undoing. 

[00:59:42] Music: Right. 

[00:59:42] Josiah: And then it also makes Andy make a choice. I’m all about choices. We saw a movie today and I was so happy at all the choices people had to make. Yep. Very different genre. Alien. But I was glad that Andy had to make a choice to go to Paris and she’s like, Oh, I don’t, I don’t have a choice in any of this when she really in truth did.

Yeah. So I like this whole. Change, except, Emily in the hospital, Andy went to go deliver the news to her in the hospital, which, devil’s advocate, Miranda told her to deliver the news. But, on the other hand, part of the magical world building of Runway Magazine is that there is always to be someone at the front desk in Miranda’s office.

And the fact that Andy and Emily were both at the hospital at the same time. Did 

[01:00:37] Rebekah: unbelievable. 

[01:00:38] Josiah: Yes, it did briefly break the suspension of disbelief for me. I was like, oh, I really like this movie I think it’s improving a lot on the book, but that wouldn’t quite be Acceptable. 

[01:00:49] Tim: Yeah. Yeah, I did like the the general change of those plots as well because It plays into the rest of the film as, you know, Andy is willing to backstab to get where she wants to be.

Yeah, it 

[01:01:06] Rebekah: comes up. Importantly, very quickly after this. 

[01:01:09] Tim: As opposed to, I’m just completely innocent. Everything that happens is forced upon me. 

[01:01:15] Rebekah: Okay, so now we are, I don’t know, half, a third or two thirds of the way through the film and at this point we go to Paris and basically everything of meaning in the film occurs in Paris.

We’re going to talk about all that and then there’s very little plot that occurs once they get back home. So we’ve got a ton of things that happened during that Paris trip. 

[01:01:35] Josiah: It’s the big climax of the film and book. I was. Surprised that the book took so long to even mention Paris. You’re past the halfway point when Emily says, Oh yeah, in seven months I’m going to go to Paris.

[01:01:50] Rebekah: Yeah. And you’re like, I’m 

[01:01:51] Josiah: already shopping for clothing. I’m already shopping for clothing. And first of all, I was like, that’s, this is late in the book to be mentioning what I’m pretty sure was going to be the climax in the film. She says, yes, I’m going to Paris cause I’m the first assistant now. And I’m doing this and that.

And it’s in a few months. First 

[01:02:07] Rebekah: assistant goes 

[01:02:07] Josiah: to Paris. But that was like. On Andy’s first day at the job in the film. So I like that they set that up earlier. In the book, Miranda and Andy attend a private dinner party in Paris for a friend of Miranda’s who turns out to be Christian’s parents. Creepy.

Christian arranged the whole thing to spend time with Andy. This is on the film. It seems to be replaced with a one night stand between Andy and Christian in the movie. It’s creepy. After a party, they don’t sleep together or share more than a fast kiss in the book. I actually kind of liked this in the book.

I don’t mind it being taken out, but I was getting really annoyed with Alex and Lily who kept yelling at Andy about how, Well, you, you don’t have a, you have a choice. Why aren’t you, why are you doing all these things for Miranda? And Andy was being annoying. She’s like, I don’t have a choice. But also on the Even though she was being a little unreasonable by pretending following Miranda.

Yeah, and pretending not to have a choice I’m just thinking about, like, a partner and a best friend being so unsupportive and un understanding about, this is an important job. Even if I do have a choice, I have agreed to 12 months of this. Deal with it for 12 months. I have already told you that I’m not going to be doing this forever.

Deal with it. So I’m already so annoyed with Alex, which is the boyfriend of the book, that when Christian it’s this party throne, and Tells Miranda, you know, gets his parents to tell Miranda that Her, someone like her assistant needs to babysit during the party, which Andy was surprised that she was invited only to find out that Miranda needed her to babysit the host’s kid.

And she 

[01:03:53] Rebekah: thinks it’s going to be some young 

[01:03:54] Josiah: boy or whatever. Yeah, or something like that. And then it was Christian and Andy was like, Oh, I don’t have to, I don’t have to do anything difficult this evening. I thought that that was the nicest thing that anyone ever did for Andy in the entire book. And I was like, Oh, yeah, this is almost too nice for Christian to have done.

[01:04:12] Rebekah: It’s weird because they make, they, you, they take stuff like that out in the film because he becomes a minor villain. 

[01:04:19] Tim: Yeah. I liked, I liked the way that it, the way that it was done in the book, as opposed to the film. The, the film is part of what, you know, makes it, makes it a little different, because in, in the book, you know, it’s a, it’s a dance, they dance a long, long time, and it’s just a, just a, a breath of fresh air kind of thing, and then he kisses her, and that’s as far as that goes.

Um, I liked that better, but they changed that for the book. Yeah. Or from, for the film. 

[01:04:52] Rebekah: And it’s also, I mean, you know, in Hollywood, it’s very normal to kind of display this just like cheap hookup culture. And to be fair, in the film, they were split up, like she was not dating Nate. Like they were on a break and like the speaking of friends, but yeah, it’s, uh, it wasn’t like, oh, she’s a terrible person, but it did.

I don’t know. I did. I don’t ever love stuff like that, but 

[01:05:18] Donna: the harsh part about it though, is in the book, even though she and Christian never went beyond a kiss, he’s the one that that Lily is like. Go get him. I mean, she’s pushing 200 percent for that. Despite the fact that 

[01:05:35] Tim: she likes Alex. 

[01:05:38] Donna: Yeah, yes. Going with Alex, 

[01:05:40] Tim: go for this other one.

[01:05:41] Donna: Yeah, I thought that was, it was a little weird. 

[01:05:43] Josiah: Now, I think that there’s a little bit of a missed opportunity in the book because, as we’ll talk in a little bit, the irony at the end of the book is that Andy basically gets her dream job, ironically, in an unexpected way, because she was working for Miranda.

No, not in the way she expected, obviously, is what I’m saying, but, I will say here, I thought that this could have been an opportunity. for her to get the job that she wanted more than anything due to Christian, which, whom she met because she was working for Miranda. So, if she had gotten the job because of Christian, she would have gotten it because she was working for Miranda, even if it wasn’t the way she expected.

So, I thought that it was a little bit of a dropped plot that could have easily gone somewhere. I guess I, I like that she didn’t use Christian to get what she wanted because he was a little bit of a sleazeball. and arrogant, but I thought that that opportunity was there. And I’m a little surprised she didn’t use it more, even if it ended up being sort of a regret of hers, like going to Paris, staying in Paris instead of the, you know, the, the climax of the book is that she stays in Paris instead of going to the people she loves.

And she realizes I’m stupid. I thought that, you know, maybe there could have been something leading up to that where she does something for Christian. 

[01:07:07] Rebekah: He’s like, oh, 

[01:07:08] Josiah: I could do that and compromise my values. Yeah, they use 

[01:07:11] Rebekah: Christian to get into the kind of big climax moment at the end of the film. They just use him to lead into that instead.

So it’s not necessarily a drop plot, they just completely shift the purpose of his story. 

[01:07:25] Josiah: They basically added that. Oh yeah. That was completely 

[01:07:27] Rebekah: just in the film 

[01:07:28] Josiah: to make Christian more justified as a person in the book, he doesn’t really end up doing anything. 

[01:07:32] Rebekah: Oh, I see what you mean in the book. He was a drop plot 

[01:07:35] Donna: at that point where she’s been put upon, but at the same time, she’s been kind of.

She’s the one that, you know, says to Nate, maybe we should break, blah, blah, blah. But there was this point there where she says to Christian, what, what are you trying to do? And he just proudly says, we’ve been going behind him around his back and we’re moving Jacqueline Foye into Miranda’s job. She’s old, blah, blah.

And they had this, he’s got this little thing where he’s just so proud of this trick. And Andy is incensed over it. And I love what the, I loved that glimpse of her character. Oh, she’s still got some goodness there. She’s not completely gone. 

[01:08:20] Rebekah: Yeah. She has some loyalty. Yes. Josiah, can you kind of break down what happens?

Cause that’s a, that’s a part. 

[01:08:27] Josiah: First of all, in the book at the beginning of Paris, Miranda is invited to this award ceremony in the last minute. She blames Andy for not knowing about it when it was, um, not Andy’s fault in the first place. But she ends up going for a second. And Andy has written this speech.

She kind of thinks, Oh, Miranda will see that I’m an okay writer. And Miranda, It’s a few minutes into the awards ceremony. Miranda says, Oh, I’m leaving. It’s taking too long. It’s just hilarious. Andy’s like, Yeah, this is one of the things I thought was a little funny. Funnier than more annoying. I don’t know, but.

And Andy, well, who’s going to accept the award? Just I don’t care. You go do it. And she took the speech with her and Miranda went out. And so Andy, although she did not have to do this, I thought it was weird that she chose to do this instead of just leave it. Up in the air, she chose, she chose to go and accept the award in front of all these strangers and she made a fool of herself, uh, expectedly.

Now this is not in the book, but it kind of feel, it has a similar vibe to the climax in the film where there is a luncheon that kind of a similar setup near the end of the Paris trip during which Miranda recognizes James Holt. The, this luncheon also brings out. And the other small subplot in which Christian reveals to Andy that the French editor of Runway, Jacqueline Follet, will be replacing Miranda der, Miranda der, will be replacing Miranda as editor in chief.

[01:10:04] Donna: I love that. 

[01:10:05] Josiah: Partly due to Miranda’s age, partly why they may have cast Meryl Streep, who was an older actress than Miranda personally in the book. Andy warns Miranda like mom was talking about, but the devil already knew. So Miranda Priestley had already been working behind the scenes. She pulled. The president position of James Holt’s new fashion brand from her loyal Nigel, played by Stanley Tucci, who we haven’t talked a lot about.

[01:10:29] Rebekah: He was awesome. 

[01:10:29] Josiah: He was awesome. Uh, at the last second. She got Jocelyn to take that position instead of taking the runway promotion away from herself. So, that’s a moment where she betrays her loyal Nigel. 

[01:10:47] Rebekah: Yeah, that’s a big part of, like, then kind of what ends up pushing her. Andy, out of the job in general, but I think to mom’s point, it is really interesting to see in the film when she finds out via Christian that they’re trying to oust Miranda very unceremoniously.

Andy’s like, no, I got to fight for this. That’s not fair. That’s not okay. How could you do that? 

[01:11:10] Donna: Yeah, 

yeah, I did. I did think that was a very, a very cool part of plot development. Um, in the film, Miranda has a, Teary-eyed conversation with Andy in her Paris hotel room, her suite in which she shares that her husband’s divorcing her.

Andy offers condolences and asks if there’s anything she can do to which Miranda simply replies your job. Miranda doesn’t get a divorce in the book at all. 

Mm-hmm . 

I will say I was glad that Miranda didn’t get a divorce in the book because I hate any plot that goes through that and that happens, but I was really.

Um, I, this was one of my favorite scenes in the movie because both of them have a, it exposes both of them. 

Andy 

can be angry. And frustrated Miranda, but then when she sees Miranda, no makeup, red eyes, blood, her compassion overflows. So it shows you she’s still in there, but then also the Miranda at this point, you’re kind of going along.

And if you haven’t really. Moved your head into reality. You can, I kind of have this thought that Miranda’s like this steel cage that cannot be touched. She cannot be affected. She has no emotion. So aloof and blah, blah, blah. And it’s this stark reminder. Oh yeah. People, real people, people are still real.

It doesn’t matter what your responsibilities are. You still have bad days. You still have things that rock your life. And you still have emotions and stuff like that. So I, I loved the way they did this in the movie. 

[01:13:00] Tim: As so often is the case. You get up and do what has to be done, and Miranda has built a reputation that she is, you know, this very, very strong woman.

So, uh, a divorce isn’t going to throw her off her game. She doesn’t need any sympathy. She’s just going to 

[01:13:20] Rebekah: push 

[01:13:20] Tim: through. 

[01:13:21] Rebekah: One of the, I said at the beginning, like one of my problems with Miranda in the book is that there’s no, you know, humanizing element to her. She’s just mean all the time. You don’t respect her, whatever.

And in this scene, this for me was like the like nail in the coffin, although it wasn’t a coffin, it wasn’t bad thing, but it was the thing that made me realize, like, I may not like who this person is portrayed to be, but like, I actually think I, I like. respect and sympathize with her. She’s clearly going through something sad and in the same breath, not only does she encourage her assistant, you have to do your job.

Like we have to continue getting things done, whatever. She also like gets very human for a second and talks about, I wonder what they’re going to write about me in the papers this time. Another divorce. So fat, you know, and all that kind of stuff. And that’s so like, it’s so heavy. But in a good way, it’s like you, you’re like, yeah, that would be really hard.

And unfortunately, the cost of the type of life that you’ve chosen to live, it was such a powerful scene. 

[01:14:26] Tim: So both the book and film have scenes where Miranda tells Andy, that she sees some of her younger self in her assistant. In the film, it’s a longer chat, during which Andy says she doesn’t want to be like Miranda, doesn’t think she’s like Miranda.

But Miranda points out that she did the same thing to Emily as Miranda did to Nigel. In the book, it’s a shorter discussion, during which Miranda places her hand on Andy’s and says the offending line, which then repeats in her mind until she gives up and leaves. Uh, you remind me of yours, of myself when I was younger.

Um, just a, an interesting plot point for that or an interesting visual for when they’re having that discussion in the back of the Mercedes. Um, this is the cost of fashion or the cost of filmmaking. To film the car scenes of Miranda and Andy in Paris, an S Class Mercedes was physically cut in half so they could get the right camera angles and good lighting.

And nice. The car was a pre production model that would have never been sold, but still. You cut a Mercedes S Class in half to get the right shot in the film. That’s 

[01:15:44] Rebekah: amazing, honestly. I think this, uh, like the repeated line of like, you remind me of myself when I was younger. This climax in the book, I, I had texted mom a couple times and been like, when does this book end?

Like I’m already kind of not in love with it. For several reasons, but this was the point at which I was like, okay, screw Andy. I hate this girl. Like, I do not like her because in the book Where is 

[01:16:11] Tim: the shark from Jaws? 

[01:16:12] Rebekah: Yeah, exactly. That’s what I asked your mom. I said, 

[01:16:15] Tim: where is the shark? 

[01:16:17] Rebekah: Yeah. So, I got so frustrated with Andy here because in the book, like I’ve said a million times, Miranda does nothing sympathetic.

Uh, you know, the one thing that she does, She tries to connect with Andy by saying you remind me of yourself when I was younger. Hey newsflash I’m about to tell you about this huge climax in the book Which most of you should and will never read because this book sucks. I’m letting it out now I like the book but they’re getting to this there’s this huge thing going on Andy’s not honest about it.

She says the vaguest, most vanilla line about what’s going on so that Miranda doesn’t know what a sacrifice she’s making to be there because she doesn’t want to burden Miranda. And so Miranda finally has a mildly human moment, puts her hand on Andy’s hand. And says, you remind me of me when I was younger and like, it’s the only nice thing she does.

And then Andy just goes into a rage, like she can’t get it out of her head. She’s so upset, whatever. And then this big climax of the film happened or of the. Book happens and then she uses it as a reason to embarrass Miranda very publicly and I lost all like interest in what happened to Andy at this point.

I just, I was like, okay, like, you know what? You could have at least tried to be honest. In that moment. Like, I don’t know. It just, it threw me. So let me tell you about the climax. Cause this was wild. This mom like almost told me before it happened. And she was like, wait, what part of the book are you at?

And I told her, she was like, Oh, I won’t tell you. I won’t spoil it. And I’m like, I thought I already knew the ending, but apparently I don’t. Okay. So they use Lily’s alcoholism as the climax of the book, which as discussed, they do not, this is not the movie at all. So while Andy’s in Paris, she gets calls from Alex and from her parents.

That, essentially, Lily has been in a bad car accident. And they, they won’t say how bad, but then she kind of teases the information out. She was drinking and driving. 

[01:18:20] Tim: But remember, these are phone calls that she didn’t answer. 

[01:18:24] Rebekah: Oh, right. Her parents Till, like, the 

[01:18:25] Tim: next day. 

[01:18:26] Rebekah: Her parents and Alex leave her messages and try to indicate that it’s Big voicemails.

Important. They did leave voicemails. They tried to indicate it was important, but then she waited several hours to call them back so that she could take a bubble bath. 

[01:18:39] Josiah: She did do that. 

[01:18:40] Rebekah: Yeah. And so again, losing respect for her. Uh, so Lily was drinking and driving on a date with an ex boyfriend that who like, by the way, Andy was shocked that she would ever be with.

But again, it’s like this sign that like she and Lily actually aren’t as close anymore. And Andy’s like, Done her dirty, you know, so she is drinking and driving drives their car in New York City the wrong way into incoming traffic Oncoming traffic. So by the time Andy finally calls them back her parents let her know that Lily is in a coma Yeah.

The doctor has said they don’t know if Lily will come out of this coma or that she may survive only with brain damage. So first of all, what a wild left turn. Now. Okay. Oh, it was a right turn. No. To be fair, uh, in the book. It, it is building to this, like it’s not as if all of a sudden you learn Lily’s an alcoholic in the same breath as like, Oh, she’s in a car accident, it’s building to this, but man, after seeing the movie and knowing how the movie ended and how it felt when the movie ended, this completely took me by surprise in the book and, um, then the, the rest of how that plays out, so she talks to her mom and dad first, Her father’s like disappointed, but kind of understands when Andrea doesn’t immediately decide to come home because he’s like, look, I understand if you have to do that.

And Andrea kind of thinks about it and she’s like, okay. Lily’s in a coma. I cannot help her. If I come home, I will just be sitting by her bedside. Then Alex gets on the phone with Andy and this is where Alex of the book and Nate of the film converge into one annoying nag. And Alex says, I know you’ll do the right thing when saying like, Getting on the next flight home is the right thing to do.

[01:20:27] Josiah: I just wanted you to tell me when you were going to fly home. Yeah, he doesn’t even pick you up. 

[01:20:33] Rebekah: There’s no chance that she won’t immediately get on the next flight. So she doesn’t get on the next flight, which is the last straw of their relationship. He will not get back together with her. And, you know, just spoiler, we already spoiler warned you, but Lily does wake up in the book.

She’s fine. She just has like a broken leg and she goes through the work of getting over her addiction, like, which is fine. So it resolves. But yeah, this part of the book, I was like, okay, first of all, it’s a out of left field thing. Second of all, the way Andy handles it annoys me, but also the way her boyfriend handles it annoys me.

Because by the way. Like, I understand that this girl is your best friend, and I understand you have not been there for her as much as you could have been in the last year, but let’s be honest, she has become an insufferable, out of control criminal at this point. Like, I’m not saying throw the girl in jail forever, but for heaven’s sake, she was drunk driving, and like, could have hurt someone else after performing sexual acts in public, being seen by a child, and laughing it off.

Like It just, the whole thing, I, like, I have no respect for Lily. 

[01:21:42] Josiah: Okay, that’s interesting. I don’t think it’s morally okay to not go to her bedside because she is an alcoholic, but I do think Andy is right in saying that there’s nothing she can do for Lily. Yeah. She’s, she’s at a work function, you 

[01:22:00] Tim: know?

Part of what I see with this is that the boyfriend and, and less the parents, much less the parents, but. He feels like the reason that Lily is in this horrible spiral that led to this is because Andy isn’t with her as much. It’s like Andy’s responsible for Lily’s spiral, which is another reason why you said you didn’t care for the way the boyfriend responded there.

I really didn’t like it. It’s like. Wait a minute. Um, people make, make their own choices. Yes, there’s probably some reason for staying with the job that pays my rent. The thing 

[01:22:40] Rebekah: you’re doing to be responsible despite the fact that it inconveniences your family and friends. Like, 

[01:22:45] Tim: but 

[01:22:45] Rebekah: it annoyed me that he made it sound like there was no choice, but one that was right.

And it’s like, okay, yes, it’s good to go be with your friend, but I’m not going to lie. Like, I don’t know what choice I would make. And like the difference of two days, like you’re going to lose me a job and potentially jeopardize a career that I’m trying to build that I have just spent. 11 months telling you like, this is all I need.

And like, you’re going to make irresponsible choices and then everybody’s going to guilt you, like guilt me into thinking that I have to come home to sit by your unconscious body when my whole family and Alex is going to be there with you. Like, Honestly, like that’s not a black and white decision. And it’s kind of funny because the book does paint it as a black and white decision.

[01:23:31] Donna: The 

[01:23:31] Rebekah: book paints Andy as kind of a jerk for not doing it in the first place. And I’m like, I don’t know if I see it that way. Like, I don’t, I don’t know. 

[01:23:38] Donna: What’s kind of like Alex when he says, Oh, I mean, I know you’ll just get on the plane. Right. When he makes that assumption, I thought at that point, cause I was, he was Mr.

Good guy throughout this book. When he did that, I was kind of like. They’ve already told you she’s in a coma, not because she has no brain activity. They knew the doctor said probably her body’s just shut off to give her rest that it needs to heal. And so that, at that point I turned and was like, wow, um, okay, everybody let’s back up.

I’m basically agreeing with you, Rebekah, but it did turn me with him a little bit there. 

[01:24:19] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[01:24:20] Donna: In the film, Andrea leaves her job immediately after the line, I see myself in you from Miranda walking away after getting out of the car in the book. This happens the next day because she’s been contemplating her choice not to go to not go home to Lily.

Which she had shared with Miranda in a previous car conversation. And what it said about her as a person. At a party where she was assisting Miranda, she was being punished for not successfully updating the twins passports and that whole thing, duh. Ridiculous. Which had just expired from halfway across the world, in the form of Miranda asking her to do increasingly absurd tasks.

Uh, this explodes, Andrea shouts a rant at Miranda, she uses a lot of profanities in a very, in a very polite company. And then she leaves to get her things from the hotel and fly home. She gets a call from Emily just before boarding her flight to confirm that she’s been fired. Cause when she, in the moving, when she gets out of the car, they’re in New York.

[01:25:29] Rebekah: No, 

[01:25:30] Josiah: no, 

[01:25:31] Rebekah: they’re in Paris. They’re going to something else midweek in fashion week. I’m And Miranda walks up the stairs. It’s, 

[01:25:38] Donna: I think I, okay, yeah. So 

[01:25:39] Rebekah: they’re still in Paris. Oh, wow. I think I just realized why I hate this so much in the book compared to the film. There’s several reasons, but in the film, they rewrote the climax to be where Miranda tells Andy, I like, I see myself in you or you remind me of you when I was younger or whatever.

And Andy essentially has a choice to say, okay, is this the life I want? Or, like, am I going to realize that none of this is actually worth it and I need to walk away? It’s all her agency. Andy alone makes this decision to be the kind of person she wants to be. In the book, she’s guilted and there is no right decision.

She’s stupid either way. But in the film, it’s like, It’s this big moment, but it’s all her agency and Miranda looks a little alarmed when all of a sudden she realizes Andy isn’t there, but there’s like this undertone of respect. Like that you finally made a decision for yourself. That’s true. It’s so good in the film.

[01:26:46] Tim: Oh, much more nuanced. I much prefer the film, the filmmaker’s decisions. For this whole section. Especially the screenwriter. Okay, 

[01:26:56] Rebekah: so that is, again, great way to kind of end that section of the film. And, uh, they do a little bit of, you know, wrap up that I think we’ll talk about in just a second. But, in the book, we’re not going to talk about the wrap up in a second, I’m going to talk about it right 

[01:27:12] Donna: now.

[01:27:13] Rebekah: In the book, Andy decides to try her hand at freelance writing to launch her career as a writer after leaving runway because she doesn’t make it the full year, whatever. Um, so she’s like going to go and put her name in different places. How can she survive on a freelancer’s income with no prospects except a few?

Oh, you know, stealing probably. So I again am like at this point I’m like, this book is the worst. I need it to be over right now. And so I was already frustrated, but she gets home from Paris. She’s got tons of stuff. She’s got this six set six piece set of Louis Vuitton luggage, tons of designer clothing, tons of makeup and all this crazy stuff.

So she makes this comment. That she waits, Emily doesn’t call her, asking for any of this stuff back, and you know, they don’t care, they don’t need it, whatevs. So she goes and sells it all and keeps the 38, 000 that she makes from selling all of this stuff that was never hers in the first place. I was like Are you joking?

Like, are you, this is how you’re finishing this story to humanize her anyway. So she found out her early firing, um, very public rant published in a magazine soon after it occurred and her creative write ups of stories like women, like herself actually served her really well to get new freelance jobs.

Miranda’s still really well known obviously in the book. And so people love her stories that are like relatable to this time, um, At Miranda’s, uh, expense, expense, basically. Although she doesn’t necessarily call Miranda out directly. Someone did write what happened at that event where she screamed at Miranda.

And so in the film, instead of going freelance. We see her at an interview for a full time writing job at a major New York newspaper. I think it’s called the New York Mirror, which I don’t think is a real publication. Um, and during the interview, her new boss comments on the fact that he talked to Miranda, told him that Andy Was her most disappointing hire.

And if he didn’t hire her for the job, he was an idiot. And she also calls Emily from, uh, she calls Emily to about the Paris clothes and says, she’d be sad to miss them. Um, but you know, you should probably have these. And then Emily makes some jokingly snide comment about having to take them in and all of this stuff.

But it’s like this nice little moment, a 

[01:29:42] Josiah: much nicer goodbye to Emily. Then in the book, 

[01:29:45] Rebekah: they try to have a moment of connection in the book, but then It isn’t, because she realizes they have nothing in common. 

[01:29:52] Tim: Both the new boss’s information about Miranda’s recommendation and the subtle nod between Miranda and Andy at the end of the film suggest an unspoken respect for Andy from the devil.

There’s nothing like that in the book, although Andy does run into Uh, the new her, the lower assistant, uh, she runs into her, uh, on the road and has empathy for the new assistant’s status. I much preferred the, the movie ending, although I kind of like I kind of like the way that the book did some of it, but I, but I like the fact that the story arc shows Miranda, though she disagrees with the decision, has some respect for Andy choosing to make the right move and instead of basically getting a job because she knows all the dirt on Miranda, uh, she gets a job because, uh, Even though she left, Miranda did recommend her.

[01:30:56] Rebekah: Yeah. She got a new job because she was actually competent. Yes. 

[01:31:00] Tim: I like that. 

[01:31:02] Josiah: Andy and Alex slash Nate do break up in both works, but the film leaves their relationship status open ended, sort of on a positive note. They’re definitely friendly, but they might not stay together because they’re moving to two different places.

Although, Now they’re gonna work full time in Ohio versus New York, so I don’t see how a relationship would work, but they’re more friendly whereas in the book It’s uncomfortable 

[01:31:27] Rebekah: He’s so bitter at her for not coming directly home from Paris that yeah They try I think they try to have a conversation about being friends, and he’s like no like I don’t know if it’s explicitly like that But it’s just very like uncomfortable, and he’s not interested Interested Like you proved who you were.

I think there’s in that conversation with them at the end, I think that he makes some comment about how like she’s different and like, it’s irrevocable. Like some of the things that have changed in her from working at runway. And it was like very, he finally becomes very like, Mean, not mean, but like he talks 

[01:32:08] Josiah: and for me, I like the book, I like that it’s a character study into Andy, even if it’s not as much a character study into Miranda as the movie is, which I like in the book.

I like, even if Andy is elitist and unlikable to me, I liked, I think the change in her made sense or her personality at the beginning of the book to the end of the book. I enjoyed seeing Andy change, even though she didn’t recognize it. That was very fun for me. It’s almost like, I love whenever a narrator or an author is lying to me, and I know that he, and I have to figure out where they’re lying to me.

I love that puzzle in my head. So, I liked all of the different character changes from beginning to end, the character arc of Andy. And one of them At the end was Nate was talking about how much she’s changed and in Andy’s. In her monologue, she was like, I don’t know what he’s talking about, but as the reader, you’re like, Oh, I can tell, I can absolutely tell you five things you did that you wouldn’t have done a year ago.

[01:33:17] Donna: Yeah. I want to move into some, a little bit of trivia, a little bit of info about the book and the film. Um, the book was released on February 6th. 2003. Movie released in, uh, June of 2006 on the 22nd in Los Angeles and then everywhere else on June 30th of 2006. Book rating in Goodreads was a 3. 8 out of five.

Generous. Um, yeah, yeah. And there were 889, 000 ratings. Rotten Tomatoes gave this a 75%, which is fresh, but to me and my, just my own I guess, unless it’s up over 80, like that’s a lot more fresh and 75 is not horrible, but this was like an 85 for me. Production costs between 35 and 41 million, a couple of different places had conflicting numbers opening weekend in the U S.

Only 27. 5 million, but the USA Canada gross was 125 million international two Oh two, a 202 million, and then a total of 327 million. So yes, definitely, definitely made a profit on it. I was rated PG 13. It was filmed in New York and Paris, France, New York city and Paris, France. But only two days were spent in Paris because the expense of flying Merrill back and forth was too much.

[01:34:56] Rebekah: That’s amazing. 

[01:34:57] Donna: I thought that was interesting. Why wouldn’t she just stay over there for a week? But apparently that was not an option. And she’s Meryl Streep and she can say that. 

[01:35:07] Tim: Well, there’s some interesting trivia and a few pieces we, we pulled out of things you might be interested in, listener. Uh, poor Anna Miranda, or Anna slash Miranda.

In June 2006, a New York, New York Post article quoted some reviewers, uh, stating that Miranda’s character was based off Anna Winter, editor in chief of Vogue magazine. After the film released, a Gawker article, Indicated one of Winter’s assistants was the model characterization for Emily. A winter, dressed head to toe in Prada, though not invited to the premiere, attended the press screening with her daughter.

She never gave public comments about it, but some close to her said she liked the film and loved Streep’s portrayal. So there may have, there may be a. Real 

[01:36:02] Josiah: Miranda Pricely. Well the film’s production designer was able to sneak into Anna Wintour’s office Lord 

[01:36:09] Donna: have mercy. 

[01:36:10] Josiah: Consequently designing Miranda’s office.

A match in film. Now that’s just mean. Some said that after winter saw the film, she had her office completely redecorated. . 

[01:36:24] Rebekah: Oh my gosh. Um, on their first day on set, Streep looked at Hathaway and said, I think you’re perfect for the role. I’m so happy we’re gonna be working together. She paused and then continued.

That’s the last nice, nice thing I’ll say to you, . 

[01:36:36] Donna: So 

[01:36:37] Rebekah: she’s just trying to, you know, get that method acting in place. Make sure we know where we stand. 

[01:36:42] Donna: The book rights were purchased before, uh, were purchased by Fox before the manuscript was even finished. Um, the studio’s executive VP was quoted in a 2016 article in Variety stating they read the first hundred pages of the manuscript.

In, of the outline, outside of the rest of the novel. So they read the first hundred pages and said, I thought Miranda Priestley was one of the greatest villains ever. I remember we aggressively went in and scooped it up. And I wondered, it’d be interesting to know, if that’s happened a lot of other times with other books.

Cause that seems a little crazy. It paid 

[01:37:20] Rebekah: off. 

[01:37:21] Donna: If you know 

[01:37:22] Rebekah: what you’re doing, I guess you can recognize it. 

[01:37:25] Tim: Screenwriter Aline McKenna moved the plot away from the expected book story to focus on the conflict between Andy and Miranda. McKenna said she used the amazing insult comic, Don Rickles, as her inspiration for Miranda.

In a variety, or in a Vanity Fair article, McKenna said before she had even started working on the screenplay, she had crafted the line, take a chance, hire the smart fat girl, which she felt summed up the disparity between Andy and the world she found herself in. Such an amazing line. 

[01:38:01] Josiah: That line, that line is so good.

Did you know that Anne Hathaway actually volunteered as an auction house assistant? for a week in preparation for this role. Oh, that’s interesting. 

[01:38:12] Rebekah: So she’d never assisted anyone she 

[01:38:14] Josiah: needed 

[01:38:14] Rebekah: to practice. 

[01:38:15] Josiah: I guess not. And I’m wondering, she was pretty famous already. So I’m just wondering if it was distracting for the people there.

[01:38:24] Rebekah: Um, okay, so I have one last bit of trivia that leads into a very quick mini game I think you’ll enjoy, and then we’ll give our final verdicts. Okay. So, Weisberger wrote two sequels to The Devil Wears Prada, neither of which are films. Uh, the first sequel is called Revenge Wears Prada, The Devil Returns. It has a 2.

99 out of 5 on Goodreads. Oh, so high. Yeah, the end of the trilogy is when life gives you Lulu lemons. That one has a 3. 74 on Goodreads. So not quite as bad, but not as good as the original. Um, also as an aside, there’s a musical for the Devil Wears Prada that premiered a preview performance at the Theatre Royale Plymouth in July of this year.

So just very recently. So I thought, you know, it’d be interesting is to know what happens in the sequel and to see. Was any of this wild character development worth it? Was any of it, did it have a point? Any, any of it? All right, so why don’t you give me a guess? I want you to each just briefly guess one thing you think happens in the sequel called Revenge Wears Prada, The Devil Returns, released in 2014.

[01:39:34] Tim: I would say that Miranda asks Andy to come back, and she does. She replaces Emily as first assistant. Interesting. 

[01:39:44] Josiah: I wonder if Miranda buys. Where Andy works. She’s the new boss there. 

[01:39:52] Donna: Okay. Maybe Andy gets in a pinch and needs Miranda. Okay. So let 

[01:39:59] Rebekah: me tell you what happens. The book opens, the book opens 10 years later.

Andy’s very sweet parents get divorced. For some reason, Lily moves out to Colorado, gets married, has a baby. Alex does teach for America. He’s in a serious relationship with someone else and Andy and Emily are now besties. They’re best friends, okay? Emily, who worked at Runway for several years to get, like, the editor job she wanted, gets fired by Miranda right before she gets promoted, ended up working at Harper’s Bazaar, and then Andy ended up writing for a wedding blog as her, like, primary client.

So at the beginning of the book, Andy is about to marry this guy named Max. He’s like rich dude from a socialite family. She’s thinking about her time at runway. Um, you discover that she’s pregnant. And in the first year of like this book that you’re reading now, she gives a birth to her daughter Clementine shortly after getting married.

So three years before, so seven years after the first book, Andy and Emily started a magazine together. It’s a wedding magazine and it’s called the plunge. Now Elias Clark wants to buy the plunge and put Miranda as the head of their magazine. Oh my gosh. But they would have to stay on at the magazine for a whole year after purchasing it.

So again, we get the plot of it’s just a year, but the amount of money that you’ll make. Oh, my gosh, would be so amazing. Emily and Andy’s husband, Max, whose business has started to struggle, are both very eager to say yes to Elias Clark because they want the money, even though they promised themselves they’d wait at least five years to sell.

OK. So, Andy’s hesitant, I don’t think I can make it, Miranda nearly killed me the first time, I, I don’t think I can make it guys. So her best friend, and her husband, go behind her back, sign the deal, Emily cuts both of them out of her life, and in the midst of all of this, They go through a montage of the year and a half after she cuts out.

She gets divorced and cuts out her best friend, Emily, from her life. Andy runs into Alex. You see, Andy went to a new mommy’s class. She accidentally met Alex’s girlfriend at the new mommy’s class and found out that Alex’s girlfriend was cheating on him. Oh no! And so anyway, she tells Alex, I think, and gets them to break up.

And Uh, you know, then Alex and Andy, they reconnect, they end up getting together, and then Miranda fires Emily as soon as they purchase the magazine, and now Miranda owns it, and neither of them have jobs. 

[01:42:40] Tim: Is that the 

[01:42:40] Rebekah: end? That’s the end of the book. 

[01:42:42] Tim: Well, then, when life gives you Lululemons, I wondered if that plot was not That they had a design, they had a design house themselves.

But, because Lululemon has something to do with that. So what you’re saying is you really want to 

[01:42:58] Rebekah: go read that book? 

[01:42:59] Tim: No, I don’t want to read either one of them. Although it did get a higher rating, right? The 

[01:43:04] Rebekah: third one did. 

[01:43:05] Tim: Yeah, the third one. But not over the first. 

[01:43:07] Rebekah: Anyway, I just thought that was literally the most disappointing thing.

[01:43:11] Tim: I’ve, I’ve read a lot of sequels that are disappointing that turn upside down the great things that happened in the first one. 

[01:43:21] Rebekah: By the way, I got that plot summary from reading reviews of the book from people who got free review copies from the publishing house. And they were like, yeah, they sent me a free copy.

And also this was stupid and I hated it 

[01:43:38] Donna: and these 

[01:43:38] Rebekah: were people that liked the first book. So anyway, wow. All right. Well, let’s go ahead and give our final verdicts. I already kind of gave away the plot here, so I’ll go first because I already told you what I think. So I hated this book. It, it was okay at the very beginning and then I just started hating the characters.

I didn’t think anybody had redeeming qualities except for characters that weren’t really integral to the plot. Um, I hated the way that Andy ended the relationship with Miranda. I hated that Miranda wasn’t relatable ever. Um, but I loved this movie. Like I’ve watched it several times over. It’s definitely a good rewatcher.

I think that the changes they made were so much better. And honestly, it had very like Jaws vibes where in the book you wanted the shark to kill everybody, but in the film they make you care about the characters and like want them to succeed. It had very much that it was like, I took a really cool concept.

That maybe was a miss or maybe it’s just me. I don’t, Josh, my husband makes fun of me cause I don’t like straight fiction. Like I don’t like things that are just like character development in a situation that’s like a believable thing that maybe happened. I don’t enjoy books like that in general, but I did enjoy the movie.

Um, so I think that the film was certainly better. 

[01:44:53] Donna: I’m going to hang off that and say, kind of felt like I said, I was going to pee off that. I’m only should not be off of things. 

[01:45:02] Josiah: I’m going to 

[01:45:02] Donna: go off what you said to say, I agree when I first started reading the book, I was like, okay, I can see this a little, it’s a little different.

She’s got kind of a worse potty mouth, blah, blah, blah. The farther I got into it. And I was not too far ahead of Tim reading, but I was, I was usually in the audio book. Maybe I was maybe two hours ahead here and there. And I kept saying things to him to just try to get a sense of what he was feeling. And we finally came together and we’re like.

Do you like any of these people are, are you getting, I mean, do you feel good about, and I said, that is the crazy part about it. And so what I’ve discovered through the podcast with this movie and with a few others we’ve done in the same way that you read a book before you see the movie and you see the movie and it’s like, Oh, no.

I’ve seen this movie. I’m the only one of the four of us. I’ve rewatched this movie often. I love this movie. It is soundtrack. I will be honest. Soundtrack is pretty great. I was so excited to read the book thinking, Oh, they’re going to flesh a lot of stuff out. This is going to be cool to see like in some of the back the back parts of their mind and see what they’re thinking about and I got into it was like huge bummer.

And so it’s interesting that that feeling can go either way. 

[01:46:24] Rebekah: Yeah, this is definitely one that I like would not recommend reading the book. But if you’re going to like, I hope you’ve seen the movie first, I guess, or maybe, maybe it’s, I don’t know. Maybe it is the opposite, 

[01:46:35] Donna: but I’m definitely going to pick the movie ever over the book for this one.

Yeah. 

[01:46:39] Tim: I have similar opinions on most of those things. Um, I definitely prefer the movie to the book. Um, it was difficult to get through the book. And it’s really strange because there’s been a few things that we’ve, we’ve read and, and reviewed the book and movie that are, are really just difficult to read.

They’re, they’re difficult for me. They don’t have a lot of redeeming quality. And I’m not a fan of this particular type of thing either. But I did much prefer the movie over the book. However, I disagree with you guys on the soundtrack. When I listened, when I watched this movie, I felt like every time the music started, it was a distraction.

It’s like, why in the world? That doesn’t sound like what’s going on, because there are movies that we listen to, and it’s like, the soundtrack is perfect. Perfect for the mood of what’s going on and everything. This one I felt like, wow, this is pop music. Where did that come from? Out of left field. So I disagreed with that part.

But I did prefer the movie. Much prefer the movie. But I, I did disagree on that. Why don’t 

[01:47:48] Donna: you love me? 

[01:47:50] Tim: Do 

[01:47:50] Josiah: you remember me talking about Save the Cat? Yes. I believe it is the same, say, called Save the Cat, where the author discusses the format, the structure of all movies. And it’s very formulaic, people don’t like it because it’s very formulaic, but he contends that it’s like, you can get creative with this, but this is what a satisfying movie is like.

And part of his structure. Is fun and games part of act two, where you simply deliver on the premise, whatever the premise is, just have some episodes where the people came to the theater to see this premise fulfilled. This is where you have fun with the premise. And the book was oops, all fun and games, 

[01:48:40] Donna: which 

[01:48:41] Josiah: wasn’t the worst thing for me.

I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the character study. of Andy changing to see what sorts of things she would put up with. I didn’t like Miranda in the book compared to the film and the movie almost exclusively made good changes. So the movie is better. The movie is better than, but I enjoyed this book. I read this book when I was a teenager and it was fun.

You’ve already 

[01:49:08] Rebekah: read this book? I didn’t even know it was a book until like, 

[01:49:13] Josiah: it’s on my bookshelf. It’s on my bookshelf upstairs. 

[01:49:15] Rebekah: Are you the one that got it on the schedule? How? I didn’t even know. Oh, that’s hilarious. I think 

[01:49:20] Josiah: that’s so funny. Yeah, because even though I did reread this book and it was a great refresher, I had read it when I was younger.

So it was on my list of things. I was like, well, if I don’t get to read it, I have read it a long time ago, but I’m glad I got to reread it. 

[01:49:35] Donna: Hello, newsflash, he thinks Anne Hathaway’s hot, so. Oh, and I love 

[01:49:39] Josiah: Anne Hathaway, and I love Meryl Streep, and I love Emily Blunt, and Stanley Jujitsu, it’s a great movie.

The movie was not as good as I remembered. The movie aged weirdly in some ways. The soundtrack, I liked The pop songs were good songs. I don’t know if they always matched the moment, but the orchestration, the orchestral incidental music was very corny, early two thousands rom com. It was kind of annoying.

[01:50:06] Music: That’s funny. 

[01:50:07] Josiah: Uh, there were just so many tropes. There were so many 20 years ago, cliches that rom coms felt like they had to do that this movie fell into. And even though all of that was the case, it was such a deep character study into both Andy and Miranda and even Emily and Nigel in this movie that really rose above the genre of, oh, it’s a funny little rom com.

It’s not even a rom com. I think one of my problems is that the filmmakers, the producers, probably the production company, tried to make it into a rom com. Yeah. It’s not. It’s not that. That’s true. It’s a workplace, more female driven dramedy. And, uh, I I I love the trope. I love the trope of a devilish mentor taking on a wide eyed, optimistic, naive protégé.

And to see their relationship grow over the course of the story is just a trope I love. And so because I just love that trope, the book was great for me, but the movie was way better in so many different ways. 

[01:51:17] Rebekah: There you have it. Everyone, baby listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, you know what to do. Go leave us a review or rating on your favorite podcast app, especially if it’s one where you can write a full review and you know what, if you want to make it one star, I mean, I’m not going to say I understand, but like email us instead.

Yeah. You could just totally email us. Book is better pod at gmail. com. But, okay. Uh, you can also find us on Instagram, X, and Facebook at bookisbetterpod. DM us there. And if you want to just hang out with us, um, hear about episodes as soon as they drop, have questions that you want us to answer, why don’t you join us in Discord?

Our Discord is free to join. Uh, we would love to have you there. And, uh, this has been a fun one to do. So, my fellow fashion editors, until next time. 

[01:52:04] Tim: Take a chance. Hire the fat 

[01:52:05] Rebekah: girl. Do your job. Suddenly I see that I’m the smart fat girl. Oh. That’s all.

[01:52:20] Josiah: Jiminy Lord. Yes, Jiminy Lord, the famous Devil Wears Prada character. 

[01:52:26] Donna: That’s one of my favorite things to say.