When The Devil Wears Prada released in theatres, its characters quickly became popular among audiences. Roles like Miranda Priestly, Andy Sachs, Emily Charlton and Nigel Kipling are still widely remembered. It has long been known that Miranda Priestly was inspired by Anna Wintour, but the inspiration behind Emily Charlton has remained less clear until now.
Celebrity stylist Leslie Fremar recently shared that she believes she is the real life inspiration for the character Emily Charlton, played by Emily Blunt. She spoke about this during an appearance on a podcast, where she said, “I know I am. I am Emily.”
Fremar also spoke about her connection to Lauren Weisberger, who wrote the novel that inspired the film. She revealed that she was the one who hired Weisberger as a junior assistant to Anna Wintour. That experience later became the basis for the character Andy Sachs, played by Anne Hathaway. She shared, “I definitely told [Lauren] a million girls would kill for the job,” and added, “That was definitely my line because I actually really believed that, and I knew that she didn’t necessarily wanna be there.”
She also recalled a moment when Anna Wintour contacted her after the book was released. Fremar said, “I was petrified. [Wintour] said, ‘Who’s Lauren Weisberger?’ And I said, ‘She was your junior assistant.’ And she’s like, ‘Well, she wrote a book about us, and you’re worse than me,’” and added, “I wanted to, like, ask more questions, but you can’t really ask her that many questions.”
Talking about how closely the story reflected real life, Fremar explained, “Even though someone obviously advised her to make it fiction, it was really based off of a lot of things that, you know, I lived, she lived… 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. So 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.”
The sequel, The Devil Wears Prada 2, is set to release on May 1, bringing renewed attention to the story and its real life inspirations.