Veteran Hollywood actress Meryl Streep initially rejected the offer for The Devil Wears Prada in a bid to double her salary, she revealed in an interview recently.
In a group interview with her The Devil Wears Prada 2 castmates on Today, the 76-year-old actress said, “I knew it was going to be a hit. I read the script — the script was great. They called me up, and they made an offer, and I said ‘No. I’m not going to do it.'”
Streep said she predicted the film’s immense success and wanted to be paid accordingly. “I wanted to see if I doubled my ask, and they went right away and said ‘Sure’,” she said.
“I’m 56 years [old] — it took me this long to understand that I could do that! I was sure of it. I was sure it would be a hit. And they needed me, I felt. And I wanted it, but if they didn’t want to do that, I was okay. Because I’m old — I’m 56, I was ready to retire,” she added.
The first film followed Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), an aspiring journalist who moves to New York City and lands a job as a junior assistant to Miranda Priestly, the demanding editor of the fictional fashion magazine Runway.
The sequel, The Devil Wears Prada 2, is scheduled for release on May 1. It is directed by David Frankel and written by Aline Brosh McKenna.
The film will follow Streep’s Miranda Priestly dealing with the decline of traditional print media, while facing off against her former assistant Emily Charlton (Blunt), now a senior executive at a luxury group controlling key advertising revenues.
The project is produced by Wendy Finerman, with Michael Bederman, Karen Rosenfelt and McKenna serving as executive producers.