Fans of Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel The Devil Wears Prada, and its 2006 film adaptation, love to hate Emily Charlton, the acid-tongued first assistant to the terrifying fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly, said to be based on the former Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Now, celebrity stylist Leslie Fremar claims that she was the basis for Emily, and she’s not exactly thrilled.
Weisberger’s novel told the story of Andrea “Andy” Sachs, who takes a job as a second assistant to Miranda, and contends with Emily; the two develop a complicated relationship. In the film adaptation, Anne Hathaway played Andy, with Meryl Streep starring as Miranda and Emily Blunt portraying Emily. The three reprise their roles in The Devil Wears Prada 2, which is set to debut in theaters Friday.
Fremar appeared on Vogue magazine’s Run-Through podcast, where she revealed that she was the inspiration for Emily; she and Weisberger both worked together at Vogue in the early 2000s.
In an excerpt posted on Instagram, Fremar said, “I got a call from [Anna Wintour’s] office saying that she wanted to see me. I was petrified. She said, ‘Who’s Lauren Weisberger?’ And I said, ‘She was your junior assistant.’ And she was like, ‘Well, she wrote a book about us, and you’re worse than me.’”
Fremar confirmed that she is responsible for one of the most iconic lines from the novel and movie. “I definitely told her a million girls would kill for the job.”
Later in the podcast, Fremar said that she hasn’t seen Weisberger in more than20 years, and that the book “felt like a betrayal” to her. But, she allowed, “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. For me, that was really frustrating. I think she was probably just sitting there writing a book and not necessarily taking the job as seriously as I did.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
