Meryl Streep didn’t play Anna Wintour in the iconic “The Devil Wears Prada” role, she played Mike Nichols and Clint Eastwood.
The 76-year-old actress shared her surprising inspiration for the role of Miranda Priestly with viewers of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Thursday.
The Golden Globe winner defined her “gentle” personality as what would happen “if[the actors]had kids.”
Stephen Colbert quipped, “I’d love to see that movie.”
She said she was inspired by when they worked together on “The Bridges of Madison County,” adding, “Clint never raised his voice.
“He directed, so people had to lean forward to hear him,” she noted, adding that it made people “sit on the edge of their seats” and “on the balls of their feet.”
The Oscar winner never shared her thought process with Eastwood, 95, but she told Nichols, 83, that Priestley embodied his “on-set command”, which “excited” the late comedian Eastwood, who died in 2014.
“Mike does it with a kind of sly humor,” she noted. “Miranda, she knows what she’s saying is a joke, but she also knows it’s kind of funny.
“People tend to think that little thing is mean, but it’s funny,” the Tony nominee continued. “I think it’s interesting.”
Streep first played Priestley in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada, co-starring Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci and Adrian Grenier.
She will play the same role in the sequel to the hit film, which will be released on May 1st.
The first trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 was released in November 2025.
Three months later, Streep joked to People that she “should win the Medal of Freedom” for spending 16 weeks in heels for the role.
In an interview in February, she described the character’s wardrobe as the same look as before, but said it “adapted over time.”
Many cast members returned for the new film, but Adrian Grenier, who played Nate, the boyfriend of Hathaway’s Andrea Sachs in the original, was not asked to appear.
“Obviously I’m disappointed,” he told Page Six last month. “There’s a backlash against the character Nate, so maybe that has something to do with it.”
