The real-life “Emily” who inspired the character of Emily Blunt The devil wears Prada He advances.
Talk to Vogue magazine‘s OperationCelebrity fashion designer Leslie Fremar has revealed that she was the inspiration for “Emily”, Meryl Streep’s assistant who played Miranda Priestly in the film and a colleague of Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs.
Lauren Weisberger released the best-selling novel and first film adaptation more than two decades ago after working as a junior assistant to Anna Wintour, the inspiration behind Streep’s Miranda Priestly, and reimagining her time working for Wintour and Wintour. Vogue magazine. Fremar hired Weisberger and worked with her for eight months.
“I definitely told her that a million girls would kill for a job,” Fremar revealed, referring to a memorable quote from the film. “That was definitely my line because I really believed in that, and I knew she didn’t necessarily want to be there.”
Despite being the inspiration for the book’s character Emily, Fremar said she didn’t learn of its release until after she had already left her job at Wintour and Vogue magazine.
“I got a call from Anna’s office saying she wanted to see me,” Fremar recalls. “I was petrified. [Wintour] He said, “Who is Lauren Weisberger?” I said: It was your little help. She said: Well, you wrote a book about us, and you’re worse than me.
Fremar also said she wanted to “ask more questions” but noted that “you can’t really ask her too many questions.”
An early version of the book was “very mean” at first, but eventually “softened up”, according to Fremar. “She felt this exposure. Even though someone clearly advised her to make it fictional, it was actually based on a lot of things that she had, you know, experienced, and lived through.”
Looking back on her time working with Weisberger, who says she “didn’t socialize with anyone else,” Fremar said, “I probably wasn’t very nice, and I probably was very nervous because I felt like I had to do her job, too. So for me, that was really frustrating. I think she was probably sitting there writing a book and didn’t necessarily take the job as seriously as I did.”
The two “never spoke again” after Weisberger left Vogue magazineIf they were to meet again now, Fremar says it would be “very awkward.”
As for Blunt, Fremar said she reached out to the actress and told her she was an inspiration for the character. “She wasn’t that interested, to be honest. I thought I was going to get a huge reaction. Like, no. It was like, ‘Oh, okay.'”
