Devil Wears Prada: Leslie Fremar reflects on meeting Emily Blunt

The Devil Wears Prada’s real-life “Emily” candidly unveiled details. Leslie Fremar spoke about her character adaptation from Lauren Weisberger’s novel with a similar title.

During the interview, she also revealed that the title was based on an honor in her time as a junior assistant to Vogue’s Anna Wintour. On April 28, she also added in her interview, “I know I am. I am Emily”.

The celebrity stylist had worked as Anna’s assistant in the early 2000s and hired Lauren to serve as the editor’s second assistant, working with her for about eight months.

Leslie recalled first hearing about Lauren’s book from Anna, herself the alleged inspiration for Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly after she was no longer the former editor-in-chief’s assistant and was instead working in Vogue’s fashion department.

“I got a call from Anna’s office saying that she wanted to see me,” Leslie remembered, noting she was very nervous about the request. “I went into her office, and she said, ‘Who’s Lauren Weisberger?’ And I said, ‘She was your junior assistant. She was only here for a short period of time, maybe eight months.’ And she’s like, ‘Well, she wrote a book about us, and you’re worse than me.’” Anna had received an early copy of the book and shared it with Leslie, who said the first version was “quite mean” but ended up being “really softened” once it was released.

“It felt quite dark, I remember thinking. And I found that quite hurtful,” Leslie explained. “What got put into the world is a much lighter, nicer version of what she actually wrote. That’s what kind of life lives in my mind, because that’s what ended up being put out there. I remember feeling like it was a betrayal at the time.”

“It just felt like this exposure,” she added. “Even though someone obviously advised her to make it fiction, it was really based on a lot of things that I lived through. She lived.”

And Leslie, who now does styling for clients like Charlize Theron, certainly recognized herself in the character of Emily. Especially when it came to one of the character’s most iconic lines from the book and the film.

“I definitely told her, ‘A million girls would kill for the job,’” Leslie revealed. “That was definitely my line because I actually really believed that, and I knew that she didn’t necessarily wanna be there.”

As for how Emily comes off in the book? Though Leslie noted the character is “not very pleasant or nice,” there was likely some truth to that portrayal.

“I probably was not very nice, and I probably was high-strung because I felt like I was having to do her job as well,” she said of Lauren. “So for me, that was really frustrating.”

“She was probably just sitting there writing a book and not necessarily taking the job as seriously as I did, or 100 million girls would,” she continued. “That probably created some tension in the office. Maybe I would snap at her—she just didn’t want to play the game.”

Despite the success of the book and the popularity of Emily, Leslie and Lauren “never talked again” after Lauren left Vogue, with Leslie adding that if they were to meet again now it would likely be “very awkward.” It was also slightly awkward when she finally met Emily Blunt and told her she was the inspiration for the character.

“She was not that interested, to be honest,” Leslie revealed. “I thought I was gonna get this, like, huge reaction. No, it was like, ‘Oh, okay.’”