The Tamesis
expected The Devil Wears Prada 2Published on May 1, the Vogue Book Club is looking at original source material—and oh, what material it is!
Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel has a lot in common with the feature film it eventually inspired, but the film made some significant changes to the original’s plot—chief among them, skipping the dramatic downward spiral of protagonist Andy Sachs’ best friend Lily; and making Miranda Priestley’s character more complex, trackThe frosty editor-in-chief.
This week, Fashion and The queen wears prada Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna returns to pen the sequel, recounting her experience turning one of the most popular romance novels into a box-office hit.
Fashion: What was your reaction when you first read it? The queen wears prada?
Erin Brosh McKenna: I saw the cover before I read this book and I thought, I want that. I want to read that. You know, I think the idea of being a young woman entering the workforce for the first time, and all of the personal and professional challenges that you face, is something that I’ve always been very interested in, for obvious reasons. When I sat down to read this book, I felt like it was a good portrait of an ambitious young woman in New York, which I was once like, and I felt like it did a good job of accurately capturing the details of a certain world. Sometimes books about the workplace are a little vague on the details, but this book is very detailed. I was completely hooked from the beginning.
How did you get involved with this film?
One of our producers, Wendy Finerman, optioned the book before it was even finished, so it was already at Fox 2000 (which was a division of Fox at the time) and they had been working on it for a few years. A few other writers tried it, and then they decided to switch from writing to directing, so they hired David Frankel and told him he could hire anyone he wanted. I’ve never met him but I’ve been following the book and when I heard he could hire anyone he wanted, I just assumed he would hire one of his friends. I didn’t know him, so I really gave him the cold shoulder and then went in and pitched my ideas, and they happened to be very consistent with his ideas.
In fact, at some point we compared the files we used in our sessions and they were very similar, the main thing being that we both thought it was important not to exaggerate or make things too silly or cartoonish. Sometimes certain workplaces (perhaps not coincidentally, predominantly female workplaces) have a tendency to make work a bit contrived and silly, and it was really important for both of us to try and show our audience what a serious industry this is. We wanted to show people the urgency of this particular business and show people that it’s not just about tacking fabric to a mannequin or throwing things in a store window; Making fashion, showing fashion to the world, and selling fashion is a very complex mechanism. We share a common interest in these details.
What aspects of the book were you eager (or not so eager) to use in a screenplay?
