Emily Blunt and Anne Hathaway both reached a new level of stardom in the hit film The Devil Wears Prada. But their standout performances alongside Meryl Streep came with a few sacrifices.
The two stars lost weight in order to commit to their characters. The intense hunger, however, would eventually get to them.
Anne Hathaway wasn’t the first choice for ‘Devil Wears Prada’
Hathaway wasn’t the immediate first choice to lead director David Frankel’s Devil Wears Prada. After Streep was cast as editor Miranda Priestly, the studio behind Prada looked for actors with more experience. The Notebook star Rachel McAdams was approached more than once for the part.
“We offered it to Rachel McAdams three times. The studio was determined to have her, and she was determined not to do it,” Frankel once told Entertainment Weekly.
Hathaway, however, fought hard for the part. Frankel would eventually set up a meeting between Hathaway and Streep so Streep could offer her input on the actor. It was a combination of meeting Streep, and Hathaway’s performance in another film that clinched her Prada.
“Meryl was eager to make the movie, and she said ‘let me meet with her.’ Brokeback Mountain was about to come out. Annie had a wonderful, small role in that,” Frankel continued. “And Meryl watched that scene from the movie, she met with her and called up Tom Rothman at Fox and said, ‘Yeah, this girl’s great, and I think we’ll work well together.’”
Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt cried from hunger while losing weight for ‘Devil Wears Prada’
Hathaway and Blunt both committed to their Prada roles by losing the required amount of weight for the film. Losing weight was an especially complicated ordeal for Hathaway, who was at first told to gain weight for Prada.
“The director and producers asked me to gain 10 lbs.,” she once told People.
She achieved this weight gain by dieting on junk food and beer. But later, she’d have to lose even more weight because she couldn’t fit into the attire she needed to wear for the movie.
“’This isn’t going to work. You have to fit into couture. Lose 10 lbs.,’” Hathaway was told by her costume designer. “It was a nightmare. It took me about a month to gain it and two months to lose it!”
Blunt would join Hathaway on her quest to lose weight, and it left both stars sobbing.
“I was thin for my height. I was basically stuck with fruit, vegetables and fish. I wouldn’t recommend that. Emily Blunt and I would clutch at each other and cry because we were so hungry,” she once told US Weekly (via Contact Music).
Emily Blunt once felt losing weight could sometimes send young girls the wrong message
In a 2009 interview with Parade, Jungle Cruise star Blunt once opened up about the media’s influence on young girls’ body image. She shared that she’d spent most of her life at her regular thin size, but made an exception for Prada where she went thinner.
“I am from a family of thin children, so I have always been OK with that. I’ve only lost weight for The Devil Wears Prada and that was because my character was supposed to be on the edge of anorexia,” she said.
Still, the star was against the media putting pressure on young girls to lose an unhealthy amount of weight.
“It is becoming worrying how many super-thin girls we see walking around, and they are so obviously ill. It is kind of accepted and it is glamorized more than it should be,” she said.
