Director David Frankel said revisiting the franchise was both a challenge and a risk.
"The first movie meant so much," Frankel said. "The idea of treading back in seemed reckless in some ways, but also a really fun challenge. And so yeah, relieved that people seemed to embrace it."
"I love these characters and obviously the movie. The first movie meant so much to all of our careers and has been such a big part of all of lives," he continued.
The sequel explores how journalism and magazine publishing have evolved over the past two decades, and specifically at the fictional Runway magazine, still headed up by Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep. Her former assistant Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway) is now an award-winning journalist who returns to Runway as features editor.
"Every time I've ever written anything about journalists I've always really longed for them to tell me it was authentic and so the fact that they felt like we had hit some of the marks of things that felt relevant and scary to them, that was very gratifying," said Aline Brosh McKenna, the film's writer.
The original film is filled with memorable, quotable moments and the filmmakers, who worked on the original as well, made sure to incorporate those references into the sequel.
"We also have a tremendous amount of history with each other. So I always had a nice reference for like, this work family got back together again," said Brosh McKenna. "So that was fun, a little meta."
"You know you want to do them because they're fun and I thought Aline did a really clever job of writing them because they're woven in a way where if you're not paying attention, you don't really miss a thing," Frankel said. "But if you were, you got a little chuckle out of it."
"And in some cases, it really ties up some loose ends about, you know, especially like the Nigel, Andy, Miranda relationship. There's some references to how things went down 20 years ago and that are explored. And even in the Andy-Emily relationship...we learn a lot," he continued.
"The Devil Wears Prada 2" is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
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