Devil Wears Prada director, David Frankel, revealed that he “never imagined” helming the sequel of the 2006 fashion film.
​During a recent chat with The Metro newspaper, the 67-year-old director admitted that after the release of the first installment of The Devil Wears Prada, he was unable to imagine how to bring back the roles played by Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci, together in one storyline.
​”There was immediate talk, of course, when the movie was successful initially. We love the characters, we love the actors, why wouldn’t you want to see them?” he told the outlet.
​David, who is also back behind the camera of the sequel to the fashion flick, explained, “But we honestly did not have the imagination to figure out how they might get back, not just get back together.
​Obviously, they could run into each other, but to put them into an orbit where the dynamics were similar seemed impossible and also very repetitive, like, oh God, we’re just gonna watch Miranda (Priestly) be mean to Andy (Sachs) again. What is she going to learn?”
​One of the reasons the filmmaker resisted making the sequel to the film was the question of what would happen if the second part did not meet the expectations of the audience after the hit original film, which marked its success both critically and commercially two decades ago.
​The filmmaker shared, “So many things have to go right, so much luck has to happen. You look back and it’s like somebody making a hole in one. It’s one of the reasons we resisted the idea of making a sequel ever because how could lightning strike again? This time you know what the goal is and you’re trying to manufacture that lightning and that’s a whole different kind of pressure.”
​Furthermore, David admitted that making The Devil Wears Prada back in 2006 was “very hard.”
​He shared some behind-the-scenes struggles at the time, noting, “Meryl wasn’t happy all the time because she kept her distance from the younger actors, and so it wasn’t such a happy experience for her socially.
​”And then Annie was going through some personal stuff, Emily was going through some personal stuff, we were struggling to make the movie, the hours were crazily long.”
​He added, “We failed miserably in many, many ways. It was just a really hard shoot.”
​The sequel to The Devil Wears Prada is released today, on May 1, in theaters.
