Anna Wintour admits Meryl Streep’s portrayal of her in The Devil Wears Prada was a ‘fair shot’

Wintour announced in June that she was stepping down as ‘Vogue’ Editor-in-Chief

Anna Wintour is sharing her honest thoughts about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of her in The Devil Wears Prada.

In the 2006 film — based on the book of the same name by Lauren Weisberger, Wintour’s former assistant — Streep plays a powerful and diabolical magazine editor, Miranda Priestley, who hires aspiring journalist Andy Sachs (played by Anne Hathaway) as her personal assistant. The role of Miranda is also believed to be partially inspired by Wintour and her career in the fashion industry.

During Tuesday’s episode of The Run-Through with Vogue podcast, host David Remnick asked Wintour if she was “hurt” by the film when it came out, despite how she later “seemed to embrace it in a certain way.”

“Well, I went to the premiere wearing Prada, completely having no idea what the film was going to be about,” she recalled. “And I think that the fashion industry were very sweetly concerned for me about the film that it was gonna paint me in some kind of difficult light.”

She said that while her peers were worried about the film painting her as a “caricature,” she thought Streep did a “fantastic” job.

Anna Wintour applauds ‘humor’ and ‘wit’ in Meryl Streep’s portrayal of her in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ (Getty Images)

“And then I went to see the film, and I found it highly enjoyable and very funny,” Wintour added. “It had a lot of humor to it, it had a lot of wit.”

The fashion icon also applauded Emily Blunt, who played another one of Miranda’s assistants, and acknowledged that she wasn’t offended by the film.

“I mean, they were all amazing. And in the end, I thought it was a fair shot,” she said.

Elsewhere in the podcast, Remnick asked Wintour if she was “actually thrilled when assistants move at a glacial pace,” which is a reference to an infamous line from the movie where Miranda sarcastically tells Andy to move slowly at work.

“Nobody at Vogue moves at a glacial pace, least of all my assistants,” Wintour quipped to Remnick.

In June, Wintour announced she was stepping down as Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, after leading the publication for 37 years. Chloe Malle, the daughter of actor Candice Bergen and filmmaker Louis Malle, was tapped to take her place, leading Vogue into its next era.

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“At a moment of change, both within fashion and outside it, Vogue must continue to be both the standard-bearer and the boundary-pushing leader,” Wintour said in a statement. “Chloe has proven often that she can find the balance between American Vogue’s long, singular history and its future on the front lines of the new. I am so excited to continue working with her, as her mentor but also as her student, while she leads us and our audiences where we’ve never been before.”

Malle, 39, was previously the editor of Vogue.com and is one of the co-hosts of The Run-Through with Vogue podcast. She stepped into her new role ahead of New York Fashion Week, which runs from September 11 to 16.

Wintour will remain as Condé Nast’s global chief content officer and Vogue’s global editorial director.