Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt’s The Devil Wears Prada characters didn’t get off to a good start in the 2006 film, but off camera their connection was undeniable.
“Did we meet before the table read?” Blunt, who portrayed lead assistant Emily in the fashion-themed movie, asked Hathaway, 41, during their reunion for the Wednesday, December 6, episode of Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series. “How did we meet?”
Hathaway, who played junior assistant Andrea “Andy,” was playfully taken aback by Blunt’s lack of memory. “This is so embarrassing because I remember every second of the first time I met you,” Hathaway said with a laugh. “I’m so much more into you than you are into me. It’s fine. It’s fine.”
Looking back, Hathaway recalled being cast as Miranda Priestly’s (Meryl Streep) fumbling new assistant before Blunt, 40, joined. “I remember walking into the room and turning and meeting you. In my head — instant thought — I was like, ‘What a movie star!’” Hathaway said. “You were shedding stardust.”
The pair then went for coffee before they officially started working side by side. “I was so green coming into that situation. And you were like the warmest embrace,” Blunt remembered of working with Hathaway. “Even though you were a colossal movie star at that time, you treated me like a complete equal. You are one of the people I’ve known longest. We’ve known each other for 18 years.”
Hathaway was stunned by Blunt’s revelation, responding, “What? Our relationship is the age of an adult.” Blunt shared, “That’s drinking age in England,” to which Hathaway joked, “We are so drunk in England right now.”
While the twosome played frenemies in The Devil Wears Prada — Andy swoops in and takes Emily’s place as Miranda’s right hand during Paris Fashion Week — on set, they were two peas in a pod.
“It was the wildest thing. We just had a joy bomb of a time on that movie,” Blunt said. “I don’t know if any of us knew it was going to become what it did. It’s quoted to me every week. It will be the movie that changed my life.”
Hathaway agreed, thanking Blunt for her lightness while filming. “I was so grateful to you, your gift of a personality. But also, your Britishness. I found that the more nervous you get the funnier you are,” the Princess Diaries star recalled. “It was like a joy bomb on nonstop Mrs. Doubtfire references.”
The pair concluded their joint interview by reminiscing about some of the movie’s best lines, including Emily’s iconic quip, “Oh, I’m sorry. Do you have some prior commitment? Some hideous skirt convention you have to go to?”
Blunt burst into laughter reading the quote for Hathaway, sharing, “I would laugh all the time because I was so horrible to you most of the time in this movie. And it was your little face — this beautiful, slightly baffled face.”
Despite a great connection between the stars, Hathaway previously claimed that a second film is not in the cards. “There’s not going to be a sequel,” she told Entertainment Tonight in October 2022. “It’s not gonna happen. It’s just like, we can’t do it. It’s not gonna happen. It exists. There are other films. There will be other films. We can just watch that one [The Devil Wears Prada] again.”
