'This girl having her phone out…': Fans spot wild error in Devil Wears Prada 2 trailer

Dubai: Before we even get to the sequel, the internet has already found something to obsess over.

In the trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2, released on 6 April, eagle-eyed fans spotted a bystander leaning out of a taxi window and filming Anne Hathaway on her iPhone as she crosses a New York City street in a chic grey suit and oversized sunglasses. Anne stayed completely in character. The fan in the taxi did not.

"This girl having her phone just wide out the window in the trailer is frying me," one viewer wrote on X. Another responded with perhaps the most perfect possible reply: "Because that's Andy Sachs. A million girls would kill for that job."

The editing error made it into the final cut and honestly, Miranda Priestly would not approve. But the fans cannot get enough of it.

That is not the only detail sharp-eyed viewers have picked apart. A second trailer released yesterday shortly after sparked a separate debate entirely, this time about internal consistency within the film's universe.

In the trailer, Andy is seen scrolling through negative memes about Miranda as Runway becomes embroiled in a scandal. One of those memes features an iconic still of Miranda that anyone who has seen the original film will immediately recognise. The problem, as viewers on X were quick to point out, is that within the world of The Devil Wears Prada, that film does not exist. The image therefore should not exist either.

"So they're using this iconic Miranda frame from the first film in the sequel's universe where that film doesn't even exist?" wrote X user Aleks Phoenix, and the post quickly gathered traction among fans who felt the detail broke the logic of the story's world.

Not everyone was quite so bothered. One X user responded to the outrage with: "It must be amazing to have this completely irrelevant thing be a huge problem in your life."

Given that the meme appears on screen for a matter of seconds, the level of debate it has generated says more about how closely people are watching than it does about any real flaw in the film. Either way, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is in cinemas on 1 May, and it is safe to say the audience is paying attention.

While the cast cannot share any details, Emily Blunt did tell E! News during filming last year: "We feel a little bit like zoo exhibits. But that's OK. People are excited."

With the sequel back in the conversation, here are some of the best behind-the-scenes stories from the original film that are worth revisiting.

Anne Hathaway was the ninth choice

Let that sink in. As Hathaway herself revealed on RuPaul's Drag Race, she was the ninth actress considered for the role of Andy Sachs. She did not have to audition, but she did have to wait, and campaign. At one point she literally traced the words "hire me" in the sand of executive Carla Hacken's zen garden. When she finally got the call, she ran out of her bedroom half dressed, screaming to her friends: "I got The Devil Wears Prada! I got The Devil Wears Prada!"

What sealed it was Meryl Streep. After watching Hathaway in Brokeback Mountain, Streep called Fox executive Tom Rothman and said simply: "Yeah, this girl's great, and I think we'll work well together."

Rachel McAdams said no. Three times.

Before Hathaway came into the picture, the studio had set their sights firmly on Rachel McAdams, then fresh off Mean Girls and The Notebook. Director David Frankel told Entertainment Weekly they offered her the role three times. She turned it down each time, not wanting to do another mainstream film back to back. Kate Hudson also passed, later admitting on Capital FM's Capital Breakfast in February 2025: "It was one of those things where I couldn't do it, and I should've made it happen, and I didn't. That was one where when I saw it I was like, 'Ugh.'"

Meryl Streep doubled her own salary

When Streep received the initial offer to play Miranda Priestly, she found it, in her words, "slightly, if not insulting, not perhaps reflective of my actual value to the project." So she walked. "There was my goodbye moment," she told Variety, "and then they doubled the offer. I was 55, and I had just learned, at a very late date, how to deal on my own behalf."

She then arrived to her meeting with the studio head having already invented Miranda's signature white hair, showing up with icy locks and channelling the character so completely that, as Frankel recalled to Entertainment Weekly, "they looked into Meryl's eyes and never said a word" about the hair.

The fashion world was terrified of Anna Wintour

Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna told Entertainment Weekly that getting anyone in fashion to speak to her during research was nearly impossible. "People were afraid of Anna and Vogue, not wanting to be blacklisted," she said. One source who did eventually speak to her delivered a note that changed the entire tone of the script: "The people in this movie are too nice. No one in that world is too nice." McKenna went back through the script and made everyone meaner.

Wintour's influence extended to locations too. The Metropolitan Museum would not allow filming because of its ties to the Met Gala. Bryant Park, then the home of New York Fashion Week, was off limits. Even Upper East Side apartment buildings refused them entry. They eventually borrowed a five-story townhouse from a friend of producer Wendy Finerman.

The only room they got right, they had to sneak into

Production designer Jess Gonchor reportedly snuck into Vogue's offices to study Anna Wintour's workspace so he could recreate it accurately for the film. He did such a convincing job that, according to director Frankel, Wintour redecorated her own office immediately after the movie came out.

No designer wanted to dress the film

Initially, no major fashion house would lend pieces for the production, all of them wary of upsetting Wintour. It was legendary costume designer Patricia Field who turned things around, eventually assembling around 150 pieces from Donna Karan, Zac Posen, Rick Owens and Prada. The cast had strict instructions about the borrowed pieces. As Streep noted drily: "We had to be very careful not to eat spaghetti at lunch, because it'd go down the front and they couldn't return it."

Emily Blunt got the part in sweatpants

Blunt was already on the Fox lot auditioning for a role in the fantasy film Eragon when a casting agent asked if she would quickly read for The Devil Wears Prada. She was running late for a flight and wearing sweatpants. Days later, still nursing her disappointment over not booking Eragon, she received a call from Frankel while standing in the bathroom of a dive bar in London. "I would have cast you off the tape," he told her, "but the studio wants to see you one more time. Can you do what you did but dress the part more?"

She got the role. And she deserves credit for one of the film's most quoted lines, which she lifted entirely from an overheard moment in a supermarket. A stressed mother turned to her child and said: "Yeah, I'm hearing this, and I want to hear this." Blunt put it straight into the film.

Meryl Streep never went to Paris

Despite Paris Fashion Week being central to the film's finale, Streep filmed all of her Paris scenes in New York. The studio decided her travel would be too expensive. Hathaway flew to France for two days of shooting, but Streep stayed behind and missed out on what sounded like a genuinely fun trip.

She had already sacrificed quite a lot for the role by that point. Committing fully to Miranda's cold demeanour meant removing herself from the laughter and banter on set. "I could hear them all rocking and laughing," she told Entertainment Weekly. "I was so depressed. That's the last time I ever attempted a Method thing."

Before going fully ice cold though, she gave Hathaway one brief moment of warmth on their first day. "I want you to know I think you're going to be great, and I'm so happy to work with you," Streep told her. "And that's the last nice thing I'm going to say to you."

That was all.