This is not the only recent film publicity tour to blur the lines between actors and fictional characters, an approach that suits this cultural and political moment, when fiction and reality often seem similarly blurred. Timothée Chalamet’s stunts for the Oscar-nominated Marty Supreme, in which he played an arrogant opportunist, included a viral video in which he pretended to be an egotistical version of himself taking over a marketing meeting. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s weepy declarations of friendship on the first Wicked tour, mirroring their characters’ bond, were widely joked about.
A ‘defanged’ character
But nothing has matched the Devil Wears Prada tour for sheer meta-ness – and critically, Wintour’s omnipresence suggests that the story’s satire has been defanged. In the original, Streep made Miranda a droll and hilarious toxic boss. “Details of your incompetence do not interest me,” she cooly tells Emily, blaming her for a scheduling change beyond her control.
But having a hit film changes a lot. It seems that Wintour has made the calculation that it’s better to be inside the tent than out. And, sadly for fans, the campaign is already signalling that the sequel will showcase a softer version of Miranda. If the trailers tell us anything, these suggest a focus on Andy’s return to Miranda’s orbit and on nostalgic callbacks to the original. In one of them, Nigel’s voiceover calls Runway “a winding road that brings us together again”.
In the joint interview Wintour – no longer the Vogue editor, but Chief Content Officer at its publisher Condé Nast – says that when she got wind of a sequel she called Streep, who reassured her: “It’s going to be all right.” Now Vogue can’t stop covering the film. The magazine has rounded up fashions from the press tour’s red carpets. Its Book Club is reading the novel that inspired the first film. Its podcast featured three of Wintour’s former assistants.
By contrast, when the original film arrived, Wintour and most fashion designers kept their distance. Streep recalls in the Vogue interview, “Everybody was afraid of Anna on the first one, so we couldn’t find any clothes.” Molly Rogers, the costume designer who wrangled the fashions this time, has said designers recognised the film would give them “best in the world placement”. As Vogue does, the film constitutes promotion for lines like Dolce & Gabbana, Balenciaga, Dior and Phoebe Philo, whose clothes all appear on screen.
