The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

and the Phone in the Fountain

A new graduate working for a brilliant, cruel editor, and the slow way the job changes her. What it teaches about every whim as an emergency, approval that never comes, bodies as policy, becoming what you laughed at, and the end of being available.

The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Directed by David Frankel, screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna from Lauren Weisberger’s novel. Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs, Emily Blunt as Emily, Stanley Tucci as Nigel, and Adrian Grenier as Andy’s boyfriend, Nate.

“Details of your incompetence do not interest me.”

Miranda Priestly, to her assistant.

This page belongs to On Screen. It is a refusal, and the gentle issue before the hard one after it, The Joy Luck Club. It is the series’ first film set almost entirely inside one workplace run on one person’s moods. Many women watched it twice: once as Andy, and later, with a job of their own, as someone who recognized the office.

Like every entry on the On Screen page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. Miranda is brilliant, and the film gives her a moment of real loneliness. The page reads what working for her does to the people around her, and what Andy finally does about it.

The Story

Andy Sachs, a new journalism graduate who knows nothing about fashion, gets a job as junior assistant to Miranda Priestly, the cruel editor-in-chief of Runway magazine. Andy plans to put up with Miranda’s abusive treatment until she can use the connections to get a job in journalism.

She doesn’t fit in, and she struggles with Miranda’s impossible demands. When she can’t get Miranda a flight home from Miami during a hurricane, she’s berated. The art director, Nigel, helps her dress for the part. Andy gets better at the job, and starts to outperform Miranda’s senior assistant, Emily, who is starving herself to be ready for Paris Fashion Week.

When Emily, ill, forgets guests’ names at a benefit, Andy saves Miranda from embarrassment, and Miranda chooses Andy for Paris instead of Emily. Andy accepts. Her boyfriend, Nate, breaks up with her: she has become one of the shallow, self-absorbed people she used to laugh at.

In Paris, Andy learns Miranda’s husband is divorcing her. She learns of a plot to replace Miranda and tries to warn her; Miranda brushes her off, and then reveals she knew all along, and has protected her own job by sacrificing Nigel’s dream job instead. When Andy is repulsed, Miranda points out that Andy did the same thing to Emily. Afraid of becoming her, Andy walks away. When Miranda calls, Andy throws her phone into a fountain.

Back in New York, Andy gets a job at a newspaper. The editor tells her that Miranda wrote that Andy was her biggest disappointment, and that he’d be an idiot not to hire her. Andy gives Emily her Paris clothes. When she passes Miranda on the street and waves, Miranda doesn’t acknowledge her, then smiles to herself in the car.

What It Gets Right

A great deal. It takes women’s work seriously: the craft, the ambition, the cost. It shows how a workplace can run on one person’s moods, and how talented people bend themselves to fit. It refuses to make Miranda a cartoon. And it ends not with a man or a promotion, but with a young woman throwing away the phone that was running her life.

What It Teaches

1. “THIS IS YOUR JOB!”

Miranda is in Miami. There’s a hurricane. Nothing is flying. She calls Andy: it’s only drizzling, she says, someone must be getting out, call everyone who has a jet, “THIS IS YOUR JOB! Get-me-HOME!”

The Decoder’s Card 10, The False Urgency, is “Manufacturing crisis to control your time.” The hurricane is real; the crisis that it’s Andy’s fault is manufactured. Many women have worked for someone, or lived with someone, for whom every inconvenience was an emergency, and every emergency was yours to fix.

2. Never enough

Andy gets better at the job, and it doesn’t matter. Each task done perfectly is followed by one that can’t be done at all. Miranda’s standard is perfection, and her praise almost never comes.

The Decoder’s Card 13, Moving Goalposts, is “Nothing is ever enough.” At work, it keeps people running for years, sure the approval is just one more success away. The film’s sly ending is that Miranda’s approval was real all along, just never said to Andy’s face.

3. “Deeply unattractive”

In a single morning, Miranda rejects a model as “paunchy,” asks whether it’s impossible to find a “lovely, slender“ female paratrooper, and wonders whether an actress has lost “any of that weight yet.” Meanwhile Emily is starving herself for Paris.

The Decoder’s Card 25, Body Shaming Disguised as Preference, is “Weaponizing ‘preferences’ into criticism.” In this office, a preference about bodies is policy, and the women in it pay with their health.

4. What Andy became

Andy starts the job as a woman who laughs at fashion, and ends it as a woman who takes Emily’s trip to Paris without blinking. Her boyfriend tells her she’s become one of the people she used to mock. When Andy is horrified that Miranda sacrificed Nigel’s job to save her own, Miranda tells her she did the same thing to Emily. “Everybody wants this. Everybody wants to be us.”

Many people know how a place can change you a little at a time, until someone you love has to point it out. It isn’t proof you were weak. It’s proof of how strong the pull was.

5. The fountain

What ends it isn’t a speech. In Paris, when Miranda calls, Andy throws her phone into a fountain and walks away.

It’s one of the best refusals in the series: no resignation letter, no confrontation, no explanation. Just the end of being available.

6. “Her biggest disappointment”

Back in New York, the newspaper editor tells Andy what Miranda wrote: that Andy was her biggest disappointment, and that he’d be an idiot not to hire her. And on the street, Miranda doesn’t wave back, but smiles to herself in the car.

The approval Andy worked so hard for came only after she left. That’s often how it goes. You don’t need to stay for it.

Women and the Work, Side by Side

	9 to 5 (1980)	Working Girl (1988)	The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Who ran the office	A man who took the credit	A woman who stole her idea	A woman who ran it on moods
What the women did	Ran it better, together	Took her idea back	Walked away
The pattern	Her work under his name	Her idea taken by her boss	Every whim an emergency

Three films about women and work, a quarter-century apart. The last one ends with the simplest refusal of all: she stopped answering.

If You Grew Up on This

Many of us watched this young, wanting the clothes, and later, with a job of our own, recognized the office. Nothing on this page asks you to stop loving Miranda. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Have you worked for someone for whom every inconvenience was your emergency?
Have you chased approval at work that never quite came?
Has a workplace changed you so slowly that someone else had to point it out?
What would your phone in the fountain be: the one thing you’d stop being available for?
Is there approval you’re still waiting for that you could stop needing?

Andy threw the phone in the fountain. The approval came anyway, and by then she didn’t need it.

You’re the audience now. You don’t have to stay for the praise.