• Anne Hathaway denied getting a facelift in a new Elle Summer 2026 cover interview
• Her snatched look at the Oscars came from hairstylist Orlando Pita’s hidden braid trick, not surgery
• Hathaway said the speculation became too “loud” and “distracting” to ignore
• She left the door open, saying “I might still get a facelift someday”
• The actress also reflected on being “harsh” with herself when she was younger

Anne Hathaway has had enough of the facelift chatter — and she’s finally saying so out loud.

The 43-year-old actress is covering Elle’s Summer 2026 issue, and in the interview published Thursday, May 21, she addressed the months-long speculation about her appearance head-on. The rumors kicked into high gear after her show-stopping turn at the 2026 Oscars, where her smooth skin and sculpted jawline had the internet convinced she’d gone under the knife. She hadn’t.

Back in March, Hathaway posted a behind-the-scenes getting-ready video on Instagram that revealed the real secret: hairstylist Orlando Pita had tucked two small hidden braids near her temples and pinned them back, giving her face a subtle, natural-looking lift. Simple enough, right? The internet was not satisfied.

https://www.instagram.com/p/annehathaway

“We’re at a time when people feel very confident in assuming what they think is fact, and sometimes what they think is accurate and sometimes it’s not,” she told Elle, when asked whether the tutorial video was a “pointed denial” of the facelift claims. She pushed back on that framing. “I wouldn’t say pointed.”

What she did say is that the noise eventually got to a level she couldn’t tune out. “My preference would be to never comment on anything and to just live in the mystery and not draw attention to myself, but the speculation has gotten so loud that you do feel the need to just get your truth out there,” Hathaway said. “And I’ll probably always wonder, ‘Should I have posted that or not? Should I have just kept going and done the thing that makes me happy and makes me feel more confident on the red carpet?’ But I felt like the conversation was becoming distracting.”

She also pushed back on just how casually people were tossing around the assumption. “Also, by the way, these are huge medical decisions that people are presuming. I wanted to show that like, no, I didn’t make a huge medical decision. It’s just two braids.”

Two braids. That’s it.

She’s Not Ruling It Out Forever

Here’s the twist: Hathaway isn’t closing the door on cosmetic procedures entirely. “And by the way, the other thing about all this is, I might still get a facelift someday,” she said. It’s a refreshingly honest answer — no moralizing, no performance of virtue, just a woman saying she’ll make her own choices about her own face when and if she feels like it.

The Page Six report on the interview also noted that Hathaway previously revealed she uses bobby pins to plump her lips — another low-key, no-surgery trick she’s been open about. The braids, the pins, the glam team: this is a woman who clearly knows her way around a red carpet prep session.

On Being Younger, Scarier, and Harsher

The facelift conversation also opened up something deeper. Hathaway reflected on how differently she would have handled this kind of scrutiny earlier in her career — and it wasn’t pretty. “One of the things about younger me is she was really scared, and I think that fear made me harsh with myself,” she said. “I shudder at the thought that I might have inadvertently been harsh with other people while I was being harsh with myself. I actually get nauseous thinking about it.”

It’s a moment of real self-awareness from someone who’s been in the public eye since she was a teenager — and who famously weathered a brutal wave of online backlash around her 2013 Oscar win for Les Misérables. That period, she’s said before, was when directors grew wary of casting her because of the toxicity attached to her online image. Christopher Nolan casting her in Interstellar the following year helped turn the tide.

The version of Hathaway talking to Elle now is clearly a different one. In her April 2026 Harper’s Bazaar cover story, she spoke about reaching a “harmonized” state with her changing body and finding a new gear at 40. She even described a vacation moment — accidentally packing her “aspirational swimsuit” on a “what?” day — that became a turning point. “When I actually looked at what it actually is, I was okay with it,” she said at the time.

What’s Next for Anne

The Elle interview comes as Hathaway is in full promo mode for The Devil Wears Prada 2, where she reprises her role as Andy Sachs alongside Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly. She’s described the sequel as a kind of emotional “do-over” — a chance to return to a film that shaped her career and show up as the person she’s worked hard to become. “I was really happy that I could share that with people who were so formative and responsible for so many of the beautiful things that I have in my life,” she said.

Beyond that, she’s also set to reunite with Nolan for The Odyssey, his sweeping historical epic, and she’s attached to the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s thriller Verity. It’s a full slate for someone who was once told her career would fall off a cliff at 35.

Elle’s Summer 2026 issue hits U.S. newsstands June 2 and the UK on June 19. And yes — it’s just two braids.

The post Anne Hathaway Sets the Record Straight on Facelift Rumors appeared first on Cream.

• Anne Hathaway is executive producing an Ella Enchanted series in development at Disney+
• The show is written by Ilana Wolpert with Beth Schwartz as showrunner, co-produced by Miramax Television and Paramount Television Studios
• The new version reimagines the 2004 film as a coming-of-age story set at a boarding school
• Hathaway is in the middle of a major Disney renaissance, with Devil Wears Prada 2 and Princess Diaries 3 also in the mix
• The series is still in early development — no cast or premiere date announced yet

Anne Hathaway is heading back to the fairy tale that first made her a household name. The Oscar winner is executive producing a new Ella Enchanted series in development at Disney+, based on the beloved 2004 Miramax film in which she starred as the title character. Deadline broke the news exclusively, and the project already has a serious creative team behind it.

Ilana Wolpert — who co-wrote the hit rom-com Anyone But You and got her start on Disney+’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series — is writing the script. Beth Schwartz, who served as executive producer and showrunner on Netflix’s Sweet Tooth and Dead Boy Detectives, is on board as showrunner. Both are also executive producing alongside Hathaway, Jonathan Rice, and Adam Shulman via Somewhere Pictures, as well as iGen Studios, the company behind Netflix’s popular YA series My Life with the Walter Boys.

A Familiar Story, Reimagined

The series keeps the core premise of both the film and Gail Carson Levine’s original novel — 16-year-old Ella of Frell is cursed at birth with the “gift” of absolute obedience, forced to comply with any command given to her. But where the film leaned into Cinderella-style romantic fantasy, the Disney+ version is going somewhere different.

When Ella is sent to boarding school after her mother’s untimely death, she starts uncovering the truth about her curse, builds an unlikely found family, and navigates an extremely inconvenient crush on the prince of her kingdom. Think less glass slipper, more coming-of-age drama with a fantasy edge. The comparison that’s already being made in development circles? Wednesday‘s fresh take on the Addams Family — a classic IP reframed through a school setting with a darker, sharper tone.

The boarding school element is actually faithful to Levine’s book, even though it never made it into the 2004 movie. Four chapters of the novel follow Ella at a finishing school for girls, where she’s mercilessly bullied but also finds a best friend. That’s the emotional backbone the new series is building on.

Anne Hathaway’s Disney Moment

It’s genuinely hard to overstate how much of a Disney resurgence Hathaway is having right now. She launched her career with the studio as a teenager — first with The Other Side of Heaven, then with The Princess Diaries, which became a global phenomenon. Now, more than two decades later, she’s practically the face of the studio’s current era.

The Devil Wears Prada 2, in which she reprised her role as Andy Sachs alongside Meryl Streep, opened on May 1 and exceeded every expectation — debuting at number one at the global box office with $233.6 million worldwide and helping Disney become the first studio to cross $2 billion globally in 2026. She’s also set to return as Mia Thermopolis in the long-awaited Princess Diaries 3.

Hathaway herself addressed the full-circle moment when she opened Disney’s upfront presentation last week, introducing new CEO Josh D’Amaro. “Like so many of you, I was introduced to Disney as a child, learning how to dream and tell stories,” she said. “Playing Mia in Princess Diaries became this magical portal that opened up my whole life and now with the Devil Wears Prada franchise; these two films that have shaped my career the most are at the same wonderful home, and I am so honored to be a part of the family.”

And the Disney projects aren’t the only things keeping her busy. Hathaway is currently starring in A24’s Mother Mary, where she plays a pop star, and has three more films on the way this year: The Odyssey, The End of Oak Street, and Verity.

The Miramax Connection

The co-production setup here is worth paying attention to. Miramax is now 49% owned by Paramount, and the two companies have been actively mining the Miramax library under new CEO Jonathan Glickman. Ella Enchanted is the second major series adaptation Miramax Television and Paramount TV Studios have developed together — the first being Cop Land, from the film’s director James Mangold. The original 2004 movie already had Disney ties, having been made when Miramax was still part of the Disney empire, with Buena Vista International handling international distribution.

The series is still in early development, so there’s no cast announcement or premiere window yet. But with Hathaway’s name attached, a creative team with real YA and fantasy credentials, and Disney clearly invested in the project, Ella Enchanted fans have every reason to be paying attention.

The post Anne Hathaway Is Bringing ‘Ella Enchanted’ to Disney+ appeared first on Cream.

• The Devil Wears Prada 2 has grossed $433.2 million globally in under two weeks, surpassing the original’s entire run.
• The film’s plot tackles media industry collapse, AI-driven layoffs, and the death of print journalism.
• Disney’s marketing campaign secured brand partnerships valued at $250 million — the studio’s largest ever by number of partners.
• The first trailer broke 20th Century’s record with 222 million views in its first 24 hours.
• Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci all return, alongside new cast members and a Lady Gaga cameo.

Twenty years after Miranda Priestly first made an entire industry flinch, The Devil Wears Prada 2 has arrived — and it’s not just a sequel. It’s a $433 million cultural event that nobody, apparently, was prepared for.

In under two weeks, the film has already blown past the original’s $326 million lifetime global haul. As of Mother’s Day weekend, it sits at $433.2 million worldwide — $144.8 million domestically and a staggering $288.4 million overseas — making it the biggest female-led movie since Barbie in 2023. It dropped only 43 percent in its second domestic weekend, which in Hollywood terms is the sign of a genuine word-of-mouth sensation, not just opening-weekend hype.

What nobody quite anticipated was how much the movie would resonate beyond the fashion world. Yes, there are the stilettos and the cerulean callbacks and the Dior. But the story driving this sequel is something rawer: the slow-motion collapse of journalism as we knew it.

The Movie’s Real Villain Is the Media Industry

“Do you remember when magazines were a thing?” It’s a throwaway line from Emily — now a top Dior executive, once Miranda’s first assistant — but it lands like a gut punch for anyone who’s worked in media. That single question essentially announces what this film is actually about.

Meryl Streep returns as Miranda Priestly, still the editor-in-chief of Runway. Stanley Tucci is back as Nigel, her right-hand man. Emily Blunt’s Emily has climbed to the executive ranks at Dior. And Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs, once the second assistant who barely survived Miranda’s orbit, is now Runway’s features editor — which means she has a front-row seat to everything falling apart. Layoffs. AI gutting editorial jobs. A media landscape increasingly dependent on tech money and the moods of tech billionaires to keep the lights on.

Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who also wrote the original, was direct about why she wanted to go there. “It seemed like they would be in the same type of existential crises that we are in in Hollywood, frankly — a massive amount of pressure to make everything monetized to within an inch of itself, in a world where we don’t know how to make money off of digital media,” she said. “And you know, it’s a comedy. So distress is your friend.”

Director David Frankel — whose father was an executive editor at The New York Times — didn’t soften it. “I do think it’s horrible what’s happened to journalists,” he said. “The movie is meant to spread joy and give some relief from the harsh realities of the world we live in. But I think the best kinds of entertainment are ones that meld some frothiness with some undergirding of serious intent. Journalism is in a bad place right now, objectively. Any time you’re living in a country where the First Amendment is under assault, you need to be concerned.”

Audiences, it turns out, were ready to hear it. The vegetables blended into the froth, as one observer put it, went down just fine — $240 million in opening weekend alone.

How Disney Pulled Off the Biggest Female-Led Marketing Campaign in Years

The path to this moment wasn’t obvious. When it became clear that Avengers: Doomsday wouldn’t be ready to open the summer, Disney movie chief Alan Bergman made a call that raised eyebrows internally: put The Devil Wears Prada 2 in the May 5 slot. The original, after all, had opened in early summer 2006 against Superman Returns and won — costing just $40 million to make while earning $326 million. The sequel cost $100 million and, so far, it’s looking like an even better bet.

But selling a sequel set two decades later, in a world where the glamour of print media has been replaced by existential dread about it, required something extraordinary. Disney’s marketing team — led by Martha Morrison, head of marketing at Disney Entertainment Studios, and Lylle Breier, executive VP of partnerships — built what the studio describes as the largest brand partnership campaign in its history by number of partners, with contributions valued at $250 million.

“The partnership campaigns are incomparable to anything we’ve done before,” Breier told The Hollywood Reporter. “We set out to have it be the best marketing partnership program that’s ever launched, and I think even delivered it ahead of a movie like Avengers.”

The partner list reads like a luxury department store directory: Dior (which plays a key role in the film itself), Google, Coca-Cola (running campaigns for both Diet Coke and Smartwater), Grey Goose, Mercedes-Benz, L’Oréal Paris, Lancôme, Zillow, TRESemmé, and United Airlines, among dozens of others. The fashion and beauty industry’s enthusiasm for this one was a complete reversal from 2006, when most luxury houses steered clear for fear of upsetting Anna Wintour.

This time, Disney was flooded with requests.

The moments that cut through were the clever ones. At the Academy Awards, Hathaway and Wintour presented together and riffed on the first film — a full-circle moment that generated headlines globally. L’Oréal Paris launched its Prada campaign at the Oscars with a spot featuring Kendall Jenner being mistaken for a new Miranda assistant candidate, alongside Simone Ashley, who plays an assistant in the sequel. It went viral immediately, exactly as intended.

Lancôme used the film to launch its new “Age is Nothing But a Number” Longevity MD skincare line, with a spot featuring Prada 2 co-stars Caleb Hearon and Pauline Chalamet — yes, Timothée Chalamet’s sister — desperately trying to track down the product for their boss. A second spot had Chalamet running into Lancôme ambassador Isabella Rossellini playing a Miranda-type figure. It was the luxury brand’s first-ever official Hollywood partnership.

“We wanted everything to be funny and bespoke,” Breier said. “But again, one of the things we really tried hard to do is not give away the movie, or have the brand spots use a ton of movie footage, but instead be part of the world.”

Even the unofficial moments worked. When Streep appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in early April wearing a blue cashmere J.Crew sweater — a nod to Miranda’s famous cerulean lecture — the $198 custom piece sold out almost immediately. A $49.99 version did too.

The first trailer, released in February, racked up more than 222 million views in its first 24 hours, becoming the most-watched trailer in 20th Century’s history. The team’s biggest challenge from there was converting that enthusiasm among older audiences into genuine ticket sales from Gen Z and younger Millennials. On opening day, 29 percent of buyers were between 25 and 34, with another 11 percent between 18 and 24. Mission accomplished.

The timing helped too. The film opened May 5, which meant its stars — including Lady Gaga, who makes a cameo — were making headlines at the Met Gala the very next day. Mother’s Day fell on its second weekend. It beat Mortal Kombat II in a domestic upset. Everything clicked.

Fashion, the Devil, and a Very Long History

At the world premiere, Streep leaned all the way into Miranda’s devilish mythology — arriving in long black gloves, Miranda’s signature sunglasses, and a flowing red leather cape from Givenchy’s Winter 2026 collection. It was a moment, and a deliberate one.

The “devil” in the title has always done more work than it appears. Fashion and Christianity have been tangled together for centuries — sometimes as adversaries, sometimes as strange collaborators. The 18th-century founder of Methodism, John Wesley, urged his followers to dress “neatly” and “plainly” as an expression of faith. Fashion, by contrast, was long cast as the enemy of spiritual purity: material desire made wearable.

And yet Christian imagery has shaped the industry in ways that are hard to overstate. Designers from Cristóbal Balenciaga to Geoffrey Beene drew on the austere elegance of Catholic vestments. Gianni Versace put the Virgin Mary on a bejeweled halter top in his Fall/Winter 1991 collection — a moment that, according to Wake Forest University religion scholar Lynn S. Neal, reflected a broader cultural shift away from institutional religion toward individual spiritual expression. “Christian symbols were lifted from church contexts and recirculated through popular culture, including fashion, in new ways,” Neal writes in her research on the subject.

Dolce & Gabbana have returned to Christian themes repeatedly — their 1998 “Stromboli” collection, their 2013 “Tailored Mosaic” line inspired by Sicilian cathedral mosaics, and most recently a 2025 menswear collection drawing on Catholic priestly vestments. At New York Fashion Week in 2026, a luxury brand called YesuGod sent looks down the runway adorned with the words “anno domini” and “the Lord is Coming.”

The devil, by contrast, has always been a bit player in this story — showing up in mid-century perfume ads and lingerie campaigns as a symbol of delicious transgression, then fading again. It’s the saints, Mary, and the iconography of holiness that have genuinely taken root on the runway.

Which makes it fitting, in a way, that Miranda Priestly — imperious, untouchable, dressed in white — has always read less like a devil and more like a deity. The title was always a bit of misdirection. The real power in that story, and in this one, isn’t hellish at all.

“Reminding people what they love so much about the first movie and then asking them to come and revisit these characters and see where they are 20 years later,” Morrison said, “was definitely a big factor in getting all audiences of all ages excited.”

At $433 million and climbing, it seems safe to say they succeeded.

The post Devil Wears Prada 2 Is Already a Phenomenon appeared first on Cream.

• Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Emily Blunt each earned $12.5 million for The Devil Wears Prada 2 via a “favored nations” deal
• All three stars could earn over $20 million each once box office bonuses kick in — and the film has already grossed $253 million in six days
• Meanwhile, a viral extra named Matthew Ables worked 15 hours on set and took home just $28.50 after buying a required suit
• Ables’ TikTok about his experience racked up 18 million combined views after the film’s May 1 premiere
• The $100 million sequel’s entire leading cast salary — $37.5 million — exceeded the first film’s entire production budget

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a story of two very different paydays. Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Emily Blunt each walked away with $12.5 million — and that’s before bonuses. Meanwhile, a Los Angeles content creator named Matthew Ables spent 15 hours on set, appeared in three seconds of the film, and netted $28.50 after buying the suit he was required to wear.

Both stories went viral this week, and together they paint a pretty vivid picture of Hollywood’s food chain.

$12.5 Million Each — and Meryl Made Sure Everyone Got the Same

According to Variety, which spoke to multiple sources close to the production, Streep was the linchpin. 20th Century Studios came to the table knowing she was the one who had to say yes — and she did, for $12.5 million. But here’s the part that’s genuinely surprising: Streep could have commanded significantly more to reprise Miranda Priestly’s silver bob, and instead she brokered what’s known in the industry as a “favored nations” deal, ensuring Hathaway and Blunt received exactly the same salary.

It’s a rare and notably classy move — one that honors the ensemble energy that made the original 2006 film such an enduring classic. On screen, Miranda treats her underlings like furniture. Off screen, Streep apparently had her costars’ backs.

The base salaries are just the start. All three women negotiated box office bonuses tied to pre-agreed grossing milestones, and those bonuses have already begun paying out. With the film crossing $253 million globally in its first six days, sources told Variety each star could ultimately earn over $20 million if audiences keep showing up — which, based on projections of up to $42 million in its second weekend, seems likely.

To put that in perspective: the combined $37.5 million in star salaries alone exceeded the entire $35 million budget of the original Devil Wears Prada. The sequel carried a $100 million budget, which director David Frankel has previously acknowledged was spent largely on cast. Interestingly, Variety notes this still isn’t the largest payday of Streep’s career — that honor goes to her work on Netflix’s 2021 film Don’t Look Up, where the streaming giant’s back-end buyout structure resulted in an even bigger check.

Representatives for 20th Century Studios, CAA (which represents all three actresses), Streep, and Blunt declined to comment. Reps for Hathaway did not return requests.

The Extra Who Made $28.50 — and Ate Butter Chicken Next to Dinosaur Fossils

Now for the other end of the spectrum.

Matthew Ables was just walking through Midtown Manhattan last July when he spotted something unmistakable: Meryl Streep, in full Miranda Priestly mode, filming outside 1221 Sixth Avenue — the building used as the offices of the fictional Runway magazine. A crowd had gathered, sensing something was happening. Then, as Ables described it, “we see the wig. And then she turns around and starts waving to everyone.”

Rather than just watch, Ables spotted a posted notice with the name of the production company and tracked down the background casting department. Two weeks later, he had an email asking him to report to set for two roles: a Met Gala paparazzo and — this is genuinely great — an “Angry Upscale Central Park Pedestrian in a Rush.”

The casting call required multiple wardrobe options for each role, including a suit for the gala scene. Ables hit Macy’s, H&M, and Urban Outfitters in a frenzy, then reported to the holding area at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on West 83rd Street, alongside hundreds of other extras. He changed into his new black Alfani suit, and then a wardrobe team member called out asking if anyone was wearing a designer suit. Ables, who by his own admission knows little about fashion, thought Alfani was Armani. He said yes. It did not go well.

“She thought I was trying to lie to her and get better placement in the scene so she got angry and was like, ‘We don’t have time to mess around on this set,'” Ables recalled to the New York Post. Fortunately, the suit passed muster for both scenes, so he was able to return everything else he’d bought.

The Central Park pedestrian scene took about an hour — real passersby kept wandering into the shot. Then came the Met Gala scene, filmed on the steps of the American Museum of Natural History starting at 9 p.m., with Streep and Stanley Tucci (who plays Runway’s art director) present for most of the night. They filmed it roughly 25 times. Wrapped at 3 a.m.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, extras broke for dinner inside the museum’s lobby. “The food was good, they had spaghetti and butter chicken, but it was interesting because I was eating around these fossils of dinosaurs,” Ables said. He also noted that one crew member had a particularly unglamorous assignment: collecting every piece of trash from every extra and sorting it for recycling, piece by piece.

After 15 hours, Ables received a check for $238.50. But the suit had cost him $210. His actual take-home: $28.50. “The suit came out to about $210, so I didn’t lose money in the end,” he said — finding the bright side with the energy of someone who genuinely doesn’t regret any of it.

He made a video about the experience that racked up 18 million combined views. So in terms of content ROI, Matthew Ables arguably had a pretty good day.

@jeremythetea

Thank you @20th Century Studios & @The Devil Wears Prada 2 for inviting me to check out the new Fashion Emergency Vending Machine at Disney Springs! 👠✨ #devilwearsprada #devilwearsprada2 #disneysprings #amc #disneyworld

♬ RUNWAY – Lady Gaga & Doechii

The Machine Behind the Movie

While Ables was sorting out his suit situation in the holding area, Disney’s marketing team was building one of the most elaborate studio campaigns in recent memory. The fictional Runway magazine was actually printed as a real 90-plus-page issue — with Emily Blunt on the cover as her character Emily Charlton — and distributed at newsstands that popped up in New York and Los Angeles. A giant red shoe with a pitchfork heel toured high-traffic plazas in six cities. Branded vending machines at AMC theaters let fans select their “fashion emergency” and receive a L’Oréal product or a copy of the magazine in return.

The world premiere at Lincoln Center on April 20 turned the entire courtyard into a fashion runway — tented, draped in silk and sheer fabric, and streamed live on Disney+, Hulu, TikTok, and ABC News. Partners included Dior, Samsung, Mercedes-Maybach, and Google, which recreated Runway’s fashion closet with a virtual try-on activation. Starbucks sent three assistants and an intern in green trench coats to deliver coffee on the red carpet. Grey Goose temporarily rebranded as Cerulean Goose and served reimagined espresso martinis inspired by Miranda Priestly’s coffee order.

“We decided that we were not going to do a standard step-and-repeat or anything that looked standard at a movie premiere, but instead, we were going to make it feel like the fashion event of the season,” said Lylle Breier, EVP of global marketing partnerships at Disney. Twenty official promotional partners. Some collaborations two years in the making. A campaign that Breier described simply as: “Everybody wants this.”

Miranda Priestly would probably find something to criticize. But $253 million in six days suggests the rest of the world disagrees.

The post Devil Wears Prada 2: Stars’ Salaries vs. One Extra’s $28.50 appeared first on Cream.

• The Devil Wears Prada 2 opened to $77M domestically and $233M globally, already outpacing the original’s entire run
• Meryl Streep initially turned down the first film — then doubled her asking price and got it
• Streep’s Miranda Priestly performance in 2006 launched a second wave of stardom that made her a mainstream icon
• Streep has never attended the Met Gala despite standing invitations — her rep confirmed it’s simply “never been her scene”
• The sequel marks Streep’s biggest box office debut ever, and her first major theatrical release since 2017’s The Post

Twenty years ago, Meryl Streep walked onto a film set in a silver wig, spoke barely above a whisper, and changed her career forever. Now, with The Devil Wears Prada 2 opening to $233 million worldwide in its debut weekend — the second-biggest global launch of 2026 — it’s worth asking: how did a “chick flick” about a fashion magazine turn the most celebrated actress of her generation into a genuine pop culture icon?

The short answer is Miranda Priestly. The longer answer involves a salary negotiation, a near-retirement, and a performance so controlled it rewrote what audiences thought Meryl Streep was capable of.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PMd1at7OwiE%3Fsi%3Des054YjvQ4PAUFwt

The Legend Before the Icon

By 2006, Streep was already a monument. Two Oscars from 13 nominations. Collaborations with Michael Cimino, Mike Nichols, Robert Zemeckis, Clint Eastwood, and Spike Jonze. An AFI Life Achievement Award at 55. She had delivered what many consider the greatest screen performance in cinema history with Sophie’s Choice in 1982 — playing a Holocaust survivor forced to choose which of her children would die — and won her second Oscar for it. She had also famously rewritten her own dialogue in Kramer vs. Kramer, insisting her character not be reduced to a lazy villain, and crafted a courtroom scene so raw it’s startling to learn the script didn’t provide it.

She was, by every measure, a legend. But “legend” and “beloved” are not always the same thing.

The image that had calcified around Streep was of a technically formidable, accent-perfecting, award-collecting force who trafficked in suffering. Audiences respected her enormously and occasionally found her exhausting. Her comedic ventures didn’t move the box office needle. She was entering her 40s in an industry that treats women in their 40s as a problem to be managed. Quirkier projects like Adaptation and Angels in America kept her credibility intact, but nothing had cracked open a new mainstream audience for her.

Then came the call about a movie based on Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel about working as a personal assistant to a thinly-veiled Anna Wintour.

She said no.

The Negotiation That Changed Everything

Streep has since revealed on Open Book with Jenna that she initially turned the role down flat. “They called me up, and they made an offer, and I said ‘No. I’m not going to do it,'” she recalled. She was 56 and, by her own admission, contemplating retirement. “I’m 56 years old, it took me this long to understand that I could do that.”

What changed her mind was a realization about leverage. She recognized the script’s potential — and decided to test it. “I wanted to see if I doubled my ask,” she said, “and they went right away and said, ‘Sure.'” She was in.

The producers had reportedly been hesitant about casting her at all, unsure she could be funny. (A baffling concern for anyone who has seen Death Becomes Her.) What they got was something more interesting than funny: a performance of icy, aristocratic minimalism that made every other choice in the film look loud by comparison.

What Made Miranda Priestly Work

The Miranda of Weisberger’s novel is not a complicated creation. She’s a pantomime villain — mean-spirited, thinly drawn, a punching bag in reverse. That works fine for a beach read. It doesn’t work for a film you want people to quote for two decades.

Streep’s Miranda never raises her voice. She doesn’t need to. A raised eyebrow does the damage. An imperious pause before “That’s all” lands harder than any shout. The famous cerulean monologue — where Miranda dismantles Andy’s smug certainty about fashion being beneath her — is delivered with the calm of someone who has already won every argument she’s ever entered. The genius is that Streep plays the character as someone whose aloofness is partly genuine and partly armor, a woman who has helped shape a brutal world and knows exactly what it cost her.

She’s monstrous and magnetic in equal measure. As Tina Fey once put it, b*tches get stuff done — and you never doubt Miranda’s power, even as you wince at how she wields it.

The performance earned Streep her 15th Oscar nomination. More importantly, it earned her something she hadn’t quite had before: a fandom.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-rDTRuCOs9g%3Fsi%3DDm6GU7100sKODgN7

The Second Wave

As The Devil Wears Prada stuck around in theaters for months — and then in the culture for years — it became clear that Streep’s performance was the adhesive holding the whole thing together. Younger audiences who had no particular attachment to Sophie’s Choice or Kramer vs. Kramer were doing impressions of Miranda Priestly. Making memes. Wearing the aesthetic. You can’t make a meme from a Holocaust drama. You absolutely can from “By all means, move at a glacial pace.”

What followed was a genuine reinvention. Mamma Mia! in 2008 proved she could carry a broad, exuberantly silly crowd-pleaser and make audiences dance in the aisles with her. Julie & Julia made her a smash with the older female demographic that Hollywood chronically ignores. It’s Complicated opposite Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin gave her a rom-com hit. Even The Iron Lady — arguably one of her clumsier performances, playing Margaret Thatcher as equal parts camp harridan and underestimated girlboss — pulled in $115 million worldwide and handed her a third Oscar. None of those films had the precise wit of The Devil Wears Prada, but they all ran on the same newly ignited current: Meryl, having fun, letting audiences in.

She had cracked a new model of screen-icon status. Not the cold, chameleonic technician of the prestige-drama years. Something warmer, more accessible — a great Hollywood entertainer who happened to also be the greatest actress alive.

The Sequel, the Comeback, and the Met Gala She Never Attended

Getting Streep back for a sequel was no small feat. Director David Frankel, screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, and the entire original cast had publicly dismissed the idea for years. “I think we’re all on record multiple times saying we wouldn’t do a sequel,” McKenna admitted. “I think I said that in 2021!” What unlocked it, Frankel said, was McKenna’s screenplay — a vision that felt genuinely new rather than a rehash. Streep agreed when she felt the project offered “an opportunity to say something completely new about these characters and about the world that they inhabit.”

That world has changed considerably. The Devil Wears Prada 2 picks up Andy Sachs returning to Runway as a features editor, navigating a media landscape decimated by tech money and clickbait economics — a timely hook that gave the story real stakes beyond nostalgia. The full original cast returned: Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci, all back in the hallowed halls of Runway.

Hathaway, for her part, has been effusive about the experience. “I loved making the first,” she told People. “I know I was stressed and anxious and all those things, but it’s one of the most hilarious experiences ever because of the people I was with.” Of Streep specifically, she said: “She’s someone I admire. Someone who defines how it’s done. Somebody who is just living greatness and never rests on that laurel, but is always pushing herself to expand as an artist. She’s unbelievable.”

The timing of the release — opening May 1, the day before the Met Gala — was not accidental. Miranda Priestly is, of course, a character built in Anna Wintour’s image, and Wintour has chaired the Met benefit for over three decades. Social media lit up with speculation that Streep herself would finally make her Met debut. She didn’t. She never has. “Meryl has been invited to the Met Gala for many years but has never attended,” her representative told People in a statement. “While she appreciates Vogue, Anna, and her incredible imagination and stamina — it has never quite been her scene.”

What Miranda Priestly does wear to a Met Gala-esque event in the sequel’s opening scene, though, is a plunging scarlet Balenciaga gown that Streep helped select herself. Costume designer Molly Rogers recalled their initial lunch meeting: “Almost at the same time, we both said, ‘It’s going to be red. The devil reappears in red! Case closed.'”

A Box Office Force at 76

The Devil Wears Prada 2‘s $233 million global opening ranks as the second-biggest worldwide debut of 2026, trailing only The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and beating the Michael Jackson biopic Michael. It’s already expected to outgross the original’s entire $326 million lifetime haul before the month is out. Disney spent roughly $100 million to produce it and another $80 million on marketing — a bet that is paying off spectacularly, with 76% of the opening weekend audience being women and an enthusiastic A- CinemaScore.

For context: the original Devil Wears Prada opened to $27.5 million in 2006. This is a different scale entirely.

“This is a sensational opening for a comedy-drama,” said box office analyst David A. Gross. “Very few dramedies do this kind of business once, let alone a second time that’s bigger.” The New York Times noted it’s the biggest domestic debut for a traditional comedy since Pitch Perfect in 2015.

Streep, now a 21-time Oscar nominee, a four-time Emmy winner, and a Kennedy Center honoree, hasn’t led a wide theatrical release since Steven Spielberg’s The Post in 2017. Her recent work — Don’t Look Up, The Prom, Let Them All Talk — all went to streaming. The multiplex missed her. This weekend proved the feeling was mutual.

In a promotional interview that cut through the usual PR polish, Streep was asked whether she’d softened Miranda for the sequel. Her answer said everything about where she stands in the industry right now: “I think when we tend to Marvel-ize the movies now — we got the villains and we got the good guys — and it’s so boring. What’s really interesting about life is that some of the heroes are flawed and some of the villains are human and interesting and have their own strengths. So that’s what I like about this. It’s messier.”

It takes a certain kind of star to casually dismiss the Marvel machine while promoting the film kicking off Disney’s summer slate. But that’s precisely the point. The Devil Wears Prada didn’t just make Meryl Streep an icon. It made her the kind of icon who doesn’t have to answer to anyone — and knows it.

Up next: a Joni Mitchell biopic from Cameron Crowe, a lead role opposite Sigourney Weaver in Joseph Cedar’s corporate thriller Useful Idiots, and a matriarch turn in a TV adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Whatever she does, the audience will follow. Miranda Priestly made sure of that.

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• The Devil Wears Prada 2 debuted at No. 1 globally with $233.6M worldwide and $77M domestically in its opening weekend
• The sequel nearly triples the original 2006 film’s $27.5M domestic opening and already represents 72% of its entire lifetime gross
• Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci all return alongside original director David Frankel
• The film earned an “A” CinemaScore and broke even — turning a profit — within its first 24 to 48 hours of release
• It marks the highest-ever opening weekend for a Meryl Streep film

Miranda Priestly is back. And she did not come to play.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 stormed into theaters this weekend and immediately rewrote the record books, debuting at No. 1 both domestically and globally with a jaw-dropping $233.6 million worldwide haul. Of that, $77 million came from North American audiences alone — nearly triple the $27.5 million the original earned when it opened in the summer of 2006. Internationally, audiences contributed over $156 million, making this the second-biggest worldwide opening of 2026, behind only The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

Disney and 20th Century Studios had to be holding their breath going in. Sequels to beloved, non-franchise films are notoriously tricky, and reuniting the original cast — Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci — plus bringing back director David Frankel required a $100 million budget, more than double the original’s $35-40 million. But the gamble paid off almost immediately. Aided by ferocious word-of-mouth and an “A” CinemaScore from exit polls, the film effectively broke even and turned a profit within roughly 24 to 48 hours of its global rollout.

“Some things never go out of fashion,” Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore, told CNBC. “It’s difficult to predict whether audiences will embrace or reject a sequel to a beloved original, but the creative teams, the marketing folks and the distribution team of Disney’s 20th Century Studios put together an irresistible hit movie that had not just appeal in the United States but also around the world.”

The $77 million domestic debut places the film fourth on the year’s domestic chart, behind The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131M), Michael ($97.5M), and Project Hail Mary ($80M). But the story overseas is where Prada 2 really made its mark — and where it’s clear that millennial and Gen X audiences around the world were ready to return to Runway magazine in a big way.

What This Means for Streep, Hathaway, and the Summer Season

This is the highest opening weekend of Meryl Streep’s entire career. Let that sink in. One of the most decorated actors in Hollywood history, and it took a fashion-world sequel at age 76 to give her the biggest box office debut of her life. It’s also one of the best openings ever for a film headlined by a female-centric cast — in the same conversation as the Wicked films and Pitch Perfect 2, ahead of Maleficent and the live-action Cinderella.

The original Devil Wears Prada was a quiet overachiever. In the summer of 2006, packed with Superman, X-Men, and Pirates of the Caribbean, a Streep-and-Hathaway dramedy about journalism and the fashion industry felt like counterprogramming before anyone used that word seriously. It never hit No. 1, but it didn’t need to — it ran long and quiet and earned $124.7 million domestically and $326.5 million worldwide on a modest budget. Twenty years later, the sequel arrived and did in one weekend what the original did in months.

By next weekend, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is expected to surpass the original’s entire worldwide lifetime gross. It currently represents 72% of that number after just three days.

The Rest of the Weekend

The Michael Jackson biopic Michael held impressively in second place, dropping only 44% to add $54 million domestically in its second frame. Its worldwide total now sits at $423-424 million — remarkable numbers for a biopic, even one with a price tag estimated between $150-200 million. The film is firmly on track to cross half a billion globally.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie continued its long, sturdy run in third place, adding $12.1 million in its fifth weekend to bring its domestic total to $402.6 million and its worldwide haul to $894 million. The billion-dollar watch is officially on.

Project Hail Mary, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, became the first film since Avatar: Fire and Ash to spend seven consecutive weekends in the top five. Its $8.5 million this weekend brings its domestic total to $318.3 million, with a global finish potentially approaching $700 million — a number only five Hollywood films hit in all of 2025.

Neon’s horror newcomer Hokum, starring Adam Scott and directed by Damian McCarthy, rounded out the top five with $6.4 million from 1,885 theaters. With an 86% critics score, it’s the distributor’s best opening since last summer’s Together.

In the U.K. and Ireland specifically, Prada 2 opened to £9.3 million ($12.6 million), also landing at No. 1, per Comscore. Michael moved to second there with $9.4 million in its second frame, bringing its U.K. cumulative to $31.2 million.

Looking ahead, this coming weekend brings Mortal Kombat II, the Hugh Jackman family mystery The Sheep Detectives, and the James Cameron-directed Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft — The Tour Live in 3D. It’ll be a crowded house. But this weekend belonged entirely to Prada — and to the four people who made us fall in love with it the first time.

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