When Meryl Streep won her third Oscar for The Iron Lady in 2012, the outcome of her seventeenth nomination, she acknowledged the elephant in the room. “I could feel half of America go, ‘Oh no, come on, why? Her. Again,’” she said, in a breathless acceptance speech, then rolled her eyes. “But, whatever.”
That blend of self-deprecation and wry empowerment sits at the root of movie stardom. At last week’s CinemaCon convention for theater owners, the most memorable stars who took the stage to promote new work managed a similar balance. Jack Black, Sandra Bullock, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, and Dwayne Johnson all exuded a kind of witty, relatable energy even as they asserted their outsized stature before the crowds.
But nobody does it like Meryl. From Kramer vs Kramer through The Bridges of Madison County and Adaptation, Streep’s versatility has been matched by the way she foregrounds the craft. She puts every nuance of the work onscreen. She manages to exude credibility without actually burying herself in the part. When she appears, audiences process both “a Meryl Street performance” and a person. Ryan Gosling nailed it in Project Hail Mary when he tries out a computer voice modeled on Streep to translate his alien character (voiced by the actual Meryl Streep). “She can do anything,” he says.
Indeed. And in The Devil Wears Prada 2, she does it again, embodying the role of fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly with the same icy demeanor and calculated business prowess that made her lightly fictionalized riff on Anna Wintour so memorable in the first entry 20 years ago. In the latest installment, her former assistant Andrea (Anne Hathaway) scores a role overseeing the editorial for Runway, a Vogue-like publication in desperate need of resuscitating its image. Andrea, now a prize-winning journalist, represents an opportunity by the family dynasty that owns the publication to buy some credibility. Streep’s Miranda once again doesn’t mince words when putting Andrea in her place. “You are a CEO’s latest whim,” she says.
Miranda is one of the great onscreen creations of the 21st century because she simultaneously contributes to a toxic work culture and an inspiring high bar. She’s a walking paradox, the diva worth rooting for even as she incites dread with every cold stare. Faced with a potential hostile takeaway in the third act, she decapitates an aspirational entrepreneur with a merciless retort: “You’re not a visionary. You’re a vendor.”
Once again directed with a slick eye for glassy New York City interiors by David Frankel, with a script by Aline Brosh McKenna, The Devil Wears Prada 2 matches the lighthearted tone of its predecessor. At the same time, it has plenty to say about the perilous state of media independence at a time when it often hangs by a thread.
Streep has a particular knack for playing women fighting for currency against a tide of forces threatening to sweep her aside. In Steven Spielberg’s The Post, she portrayed The Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham in the midst of the decision to publish the Pentagon Papers. While Miranda doesn’t quite face the same critical inflection point, she does ultimately navigate the power structures around her to preserve editorial autonomy. Despite its fluffy exterior, The Devil Wears Prada 2 carries a cause. Not for nothing did Streep announce, at a recent red carpet event, that the wardrobes from the movie would be auctioned off to benefit the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Streep isn’t a typical Hollywood activist. The advocacy extends to the work itself. She persuades audiences to invest in her resilience, and with each performance, delivers a unique brand of movie magic in human form.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 opens at the Southampton Playhouse on Thursday, April 30.