A movie about fashion models that joked about not eating to stay thin has completely reversed course for its sequel.
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” is the follow-up to the fangirl favorite from 2006, starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. This time around, however, Hathaway did not want the reality of the fashion industry to deter anyone from seeing her film.
‘I just know that this movie is for everyone.’
Skeleton crew
The controversy started when Streep told fashion rag Harper’s Bazaar that the models she saw in Milan during production were not only “beautiful and young,” but also “alarmingly thin.”
“I thought that all had been addressed years ago,” Streep told the outlet. She added that Hathaway made the producers promise then and there that the models in the new movie would not be so thin.
“She made a beeline to the producers about it, securing promises that the models in the show that we were putting together for our film would not be so skeletal!”
“She’s a stand-up girl,” Streep stated.
Body doubled
This put the onus on Hathaway to explain herself to fawning activists during subsequent interviews. At the premiere in New York City, Hathaway told Variety that she had noticed “beautiful models on set,” but “a lot of them were more traditionally model-sized.”
“I thought the scene would be so much more enjoyable for the audience if we had just a wider range of bodies on display, because all different shapes are beautiful,” Hathaway claimed.
The 43-year-old explained that she asked her producers if they thought the scene would be “stronger” if it had “a more inclusive approach to sizing.”
At her behest, the producers allegedly made the changes within an hour.
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Diet rights
In an interview with “Good Morning America” on Monday, Hathaway continued her campaign by saying she wanted to correct any “misinformation” about getting thin models fired “because of the size inclusivity.”
“That just didn’t happen. Nobody lost their jobs. In fact, it created more jobs,” she claimed. “It was just about making sure that so many different body types saw themselves in a moment in the script.”
Amid the hosts’ gushing over her progressivism, Hathaway asked, “Isn’t it better when you see so many different types of bodies up there with that?”
Original thin
“The Devil Wears Prada” had a $27.5 million opening in June 2006, eventually totaling over $326 million against a $35 million budget. The sequel seems football fields away from its original tone, however, which poked fun at the absurdity of models starving themselves.
One memorable scene included Emily Blunt’s character telling Hathaway’s about her lack of eating in order to stay thin.
“You look so thin,” Hathaway’s character says at an event.
“It’s for Paris. I’m on this new diet,” Blunt replies. “It’s very effective. Well, I don’t eat anything, and when I feel like I’m about to faint, I eat a cube of cheese. … I’m just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.”
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Size queens
In another red-carpet interview with Etalk, Hathaway again remarked that she relished the ability to utilize “a more inclusive approach to beauty standards” in the new film, repeating the term “traditionally sized.”
The actress was met by yet another journalist eager to speak about the issue, revealing that she has been a “size inclusivity advocate for 15 years.”
Hathaway boasted to the reporter that she “had seen that there were a lot of traditionally sized models in our movie, and I just know that this movie is for everyone.”
Hathaway even spoke on behalf of her producers, saying they were “so embarrassed” when they realized there was a serious lack of body diversity on the movie set. Now moving the timeline to two hours, she said the producers quickly brought in more girls for the scene.
In what seemed like a borderline-forced happy-go-lucky attitude, the actress concluded that everyone feels “happier” when everybody feels “included.”
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