Emily Blunt has reflected on her experience working with Meryl Streep during filming of The Devil Wears Prada, saying she initially felt intimidated by the Oscar-winning actress.
Speaking during a SiriusXM Front Row conversation hosted by Andy Cohen, alongside Streep, Anne Hathaway and Stanley Tucci, Blunt said she was nervous during the making of the original film.
“I mean, on the first one, I was quite scared because I feel like you were in a zone,” Blunt told Streep, according to PEOPLE magazine. Streep agreed, responding, “Oh, yeah. I was in that zone.”
Blunt joked that Streep remained fully in character as the formidable fashion editor Miranda Priestly throughout filming. “She was in a Miranda zone,” she said.
While she clarified that Streep was never unapproachable, Blunt noted that she remained very serious on set and rarely broke character. “Not impenetrable, but we could come up and tell you a funny story, but you wouldn’t do your extraordinary laugh that I normally heard,” she added.
When asked whether she was deliberately method acting, Streep replied simply, “No.”
She went on to explain that she built Miranda Priestly’s commanding presence by maintaining a degree of distance during filming. “It was just like a slight remove. The authority, the thing,” she said.
Streep also suggested that keeping some separation from the rest of the cast helped reinforce the character’s status as the intimidating magazine boss. “It’s like you have to have just a little bit of a barrier to feel like the boss,” she explained, recalling how she would hear the rest of the cast socialising while she stayed in her trailer.
The sequel to The Devil Wears Prada is due to arrive in cinemas on 1 May, and will see Miranda Priestly navigating the changing world of magazine publishing, while facing Emily Blunt’s character, now a powerful executive in the luxury industry.
(With inputs from ANI)