In the twenty years since Meryl Streep debuted her role as Miranda Priestly in the first The Devil Wears Prada, the character has come to be known as one of the best female villains in movie history. With the sequel among 2026 movie releases in theaters now, Streep namechecked Marvel while sharing some interesting insight on the Runway editor-in-chief.
In The Devil Wears Prada 2, Miranda isn’t quite the intimidating boss that she was in the first film. When we catch up with her this time around, she’s dealing with some big changes to Runway and portrays a lot more emotion than she did in the 2006 movie. When Hits Radio UK brought up Miranda’s “soft side” being in the sequel, Meryl Streep said this:
I don’t know, I feel like you get a realistic view. I think we tend to Marvel-ize the movies now. We got the villains, we got the good guys, and it’s so boring. And what’s really interesting about life is that some of the heroes are flawed and some of the villains are human and interesting in their own and have their own strengths, you know?
Oh, good point! While we might automatically think of a character like Miranda as the villain, Meryl Streep brought up that people often live in the grey areas in between good and bad, and she actually likes it that way. As she added:
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That’s what I like about this one, it’s messier.
It’s interesting too that she specifically brings up Marvel as perhaps one reason why audiences think of characters as the hero and villain. It definitely makes me wonder what Meryl Streep’s thoughts are about superhero movies, and the fact that there continuously are upcoming Marvel movies on the movie schedule really does make us think differently about the movies and TV shows we consume.
I mean, superhero movies are sort of our modern legends, aren’t they? Before there were comic books, there were fairytales and folklore with definitive good and bad characters and before that there were things like mythological and biblical characters of a similar nature. Certainly, I doubt Meryl Streep is blaming the tale as old as time storytelling method of good vs. evil to Marvel, but I do think it’s an interesting way to point out this tendency.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 certainly does have a layered approach to each of its characters and that’s certainly part of why reviews have been positive about it. While the character is widely thought to be a portrayal of Anna Wintour, Streep actually based her on Clint Eastwood and Mike Nichols.
You can see Meryl Streep back in her famous role alongside Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt, Simone Ashley and more now.