For the last two decades, the name Miranda Priestly has brought to mind a set of iconic images: a frosty white bob, a withering stare to rival Medusa’s, and, of course, a pile of designer coats and purses brusquely dumped atop her assistant’s desk.
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Back in 2006, “The Devil Wears Prada” used those images to introduce Meryl Streep’s Miranda as a paragon of couture, competence, and a kind of hierarchical viciousness that would feel more appropriate in a medieval throne room than a boardroom. But in the long-awaited sequel, out Friday, one of Miranda’s fiercest weapons has been dulled: her tyranny.
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” largely plays this change for humor. Miranda’s former assistant, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) who’s returned to the fictional Runway magazine as a serious journalist, learns that an HR complaint is the reason Miranda must now wrestle her own coats into the office closet — a quotidian task that Streep completes with a flair for physical comedy. Miranda’s struggles to adjust to the culture shift in the workplace make for some of the film’s funniest moments, like when a Freudian slip leads her to describe size diversity on the runway as “body-negative,” to her assistant’s chagrin.
It’s a marked change from the Miranda who presided over Runway 20 years ago. Though the original film contains glimpses of the pressure Miranda faced as a woman in charge — especially in the memorably tender scene after her husband asks for a divorce — for the most part, her demanding and aloof nature translated onscreen in 2006 as the inevitable price of being glamorous and chic. Miranda Priestly wasn’t one of the people by design. In the words of her right-hand man, Nigel (Stanley Tucci), “Her opinion is the only one that matters.”
A lot has changed in the ensuing decades. Although Miranda is still aloof and intimidating in 2026, those qualities no longer signal power in the workplace — in fact, they often read as out of touch.
Miranda’s preferred form of leadership has fallen out of fashion
Macall Polay/20th Century Studios
This shift is most apparent in “The Devil Wears Prada 2” when Miranda is surrounded by people perched above her on the food chain. (Yes, even Miranda answers to someone. She’s the editor in chief of a Vogue-like fashion magazine, not its owner.)
When Miranda’s longtime boss, Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), suddenly dies, his son, Jay Ravitz (B.J. Novak), assumes control of Runway. Swathed in greyscale athleisure — a fireable offense in the magazine’s heyday — and carrying an air of postmodern flippancy, Jay represents how casualized office culture has become, both in the literal sense of Silicon Valley aesthetics and in the emotional sense of slumping morale.
Miranda’s standing as an A-list executive who’s steered Runway for decades and maintained its reputation as an arbiter of taste doesn’t matter to Jay. He treats her like any other employee: He leaves her hanging for weeks after a major company crisis, then shows up to her office unannounced with a small army of cost-cutting consultants. He gives her playful, condescending punches on the shoulder and makes her eat in the office cafeteria in something close to a humiliation ritual. (Nigel remarks in shock, “She’s never even been to that floor.”)
Anyone who’s had a boss like Miranda may enjoy watching her be taken down a few pegs, which is likely the point. The movie accurately depicts how changing views on workplace harassment have upended management in the time since “The Devil Wears Prada” premiered in 2006.
That’s not to say Jay’s management style is much healthier. He still wields power with relish and cold disregard for other people’s livelihoods — it’s just that his disrespect and megalomania are expressed with performative casualness. The three martini lunches and cutthroat red carpet events have been replaced with cafeteria food and a hollow insistence that “we’re all a family.”
Jay, along with the wealthy tech bro Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux), are positioned as the real villains of “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” much more so than Miranda, who, by the story’s end, clings to her position at Runway by the tips of her French manicure. It’s clear that her reign of terror, if not her reign at Runway in any capacity, is nearing its end.
In one of the film’s final scenes, Miranda shocks Andy with a moment of self-reflection. Sitting in the back of a car with a twinkle in her eye, she encourages Andy to write the tell-all memoir about working under her that she’d secretly been plotting. If she does, Miranda implores, she must include all the juicy and unflattering bits: Miranda’s impatience, her flashes of spite, her perennial allergy to compromise.
Miranda understands the importance of mythology. Perhaps a bestselling exposé, she muses, can help her cling to relevance a little longer.
More likely, however, Andy’s book will read like a eulogy for the kind of boss that once stalked the halls of corporate America. Rest in peace, Miranda Priestly: They don’t make tyrants like you anymore.
