Anne Hathaway wants to be on 'right side of history' with 'Devil Wears Prada 2'

NEW YORK – Think of "The Devil Wears Prada 2" as this generation's "All the President's Men." Only this time, Bernstein and Woodward are rocking Fendi and Hermès.

Wrapped inside a glossy, Valentino-heeled package, the long-awaited sequel (in theaters May 1) is actually Trojan horsing a capital-J journalism movie. Set 20 years after the events of the hit 2006 dramedy, the new film follows the prickly Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) and principled Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) as they take a valiant last stand for print media against the rapidly changing tides of AI and monetized digital content.

"This is a fun fashion movie. There's a lot of music; there’s a lot of laughs," Streep, 76, says with a grin, seated in a downtown hotel that's been chicly transformed into Miranda's Runway magazine office.

But at the film's core, "it's written on the shifting sands of the reality of being alive right now," she adds. "In every business, in every outlet, in every enterprise – people are uncertain about where it's all going."

For Hathaway, 43, it was crucial not to just cash in on the oft-quoted original, which earned Streep a best actress Oscar nomination for her deceptively nuanced portrayal of a formidable editor-in-chief.

"We talked a lot about how we didn't want to come back and just make a nostalgic movie in order for us to pick up these characters again," Hathaway says. "The legacy of the first one is still going strong; we didn't have to do this. We needed a great story, and we needed something that felt urgent and very human."

'The Devil Wears Prada 2' is 'a love letter to journalists'

In the first "Devil Wears Prada," the naïve and ordinary Andy scores a job at Runway as the new assistant to Miranda, an Anna Wintour-esque boss whose ice queen persona melts over the course of the film. Andy quickly gets swept up in the business of high fashion, but fearing that she’s lost herself, eventually decides to quit.

Directed by David Frankel, son of famed New York Times editor Max Frankel, the sequel picks up with Andy as an award-winning reporter who lands back at Runway after she and many others are suddenly laid off from a New York newspaper. Now the magazine's features editor, Andy struggles to create "worthwhile" journalism as a revolving door of media executives demand more page views, more exclusives, more ad dollars and more social content.

"It is a love letter to journalists," Hathaway says. "There are so many aspects of our society that are under siege right now, and one of the ones that frightens us the most is the way journalism is under siege and what's happening to truth. So it's very important to be on the right side of history when it comes to this particular issue."

Frankly, the movie should come with a trigger warning for journalists, who are seeing their jobs slashed at increasingly alarming rates as media companies get stripped for parts. Miranda’s right-hand man, Nigel (Stanley Tucci), bemoans that there's no budget left for sophisticated fashion photo spreads, and how Runway has been reduced to pithy videos that people watch on the toilet. Andy is forced to write branded, sponsored stories for former colleague Emily (Emily Blunt), who has jumped ship on magazines to work at Dior.

And when a bro-y CEO (B.J. Novak) takes charge of Runway, the entire features section faces the chopping block. ("We can't keep sucking the soul out of everything, gutting it and repackaging it," Andy laments through tears.)

"The future is coming for all of us, and maybe we’re just meant to be subsumed or washed away," Frankel says, paraphrasing a Jeff Bezos-style billionaire (Justin Theroux) who's new to the sequel. "I don't remember a time in culture where it felt like things were changing so dramatically and it was such a mystery. All these characters are living in a world of uncertainty, and that's where we are right now."

But there are glimmers of hope: The sequel adds a slew of young Runway assistants played by Simone Ashley ("Bridgerton"), Caleb Hearon ("Pizza Movie") and Helen J. Shen ("Maybe Happy Ending"). Andy and Nigel initially dismiss their Gen Z colleagues as inexperienced. But Shen's go-getter, Jin, shows Andy that you can create healthy boundaries around your boss and the workplace, and that technology isn't always something to be feared.

"Underestimation does not faze Jin at all," Shen says. "She comes up with solutions that may seem quite out of the box to Andy, but sometimes, you need to see things from a fresh perspective."

Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep pitch 'Devil Wears Prada 3'

After the sequel's global promotional tour, Streep says the filmmakers are planning to auction off the costumes, with proceeds going to a nonprofit that supports press freedom.

"We thought, 'We're a fashion movie,'" Streep says. "Let's take all these clothes and we'll throw money at the Committee to Protect Journalists. So that's where that's going! Boom!"

"Prada 2" is a rare sequel outing from Oscar winners Streep and Hathaway, both of whom have been extremely selective about the franchises they sign onto. Aside from Miranda, Streep has only ever reprised one other film character: Donna Sheridan in the "Mamma Mia!" movies. Hathaway, meanwhile, has only done sequels to "The Princess Diaries" and "Alice in Wonderland."

The first "Prada" ended with Andy getting out of Miranda's limo and throwing her work phone into a fountain, fed up with the cutthroat, backstabbing world of designer fashion.

"It's open-ended," Streep says. "You want to see where that goes; you want to see what she does in her life. I haven't made a lot of movies that are not finite. They finish when they finish. They don't feel like, 'I can't wait to see what Julia Child does next!'"

"But we want to! Would you?" Hathaway exclaims, lighting up at the possibility of a "Julie & Julia" follow-up.

Streep is still holding out for a third "Mamma Mia!" despite the surprising revelation that her character died between the first and second films. ("You think that Donna died, but maybe she didn't ‒ I'm just saying!" Streep teases playfully.) The Hollywood icon would also be game to team up with Hathaway for a movie musical at some point.

"Maybe that's the third one!" Hathaway jokes. " 'The Devil Wears Prada Sings!'"