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The Meryl Streep Line That Made Me Emotional
It touched a nerve with many career women.
Meryl Streep in "The Devil Wears Prada 2."
FlixPix/Alamy Stock Photo
Meryl Streep ad-libbed a line near the end of “The Devil Wears Prada 2” that made me surprisingly emotional — and touched a nerve with women like me who’ve spent decades climbing the corporate ladder in perilous pumps.
Streep plays Miranda Priestly, the editor of Runway magazine, who rules her stylish universe with the icy tartness of lemon sorbet.
Miranda/Meryl was 56 in 2006 when the first “The Devil Wears Prada” movie was made, and she’s 76 in the hit sequel, “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” in theaters now. Take note: age does not slow Miranda’s ambition; it supercharges it.
In the first movie, Miranda is particularly caustic as she squints down at her underlings with curt, pronouncements like “Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking” and “Details of your incompetence do not interest me.”
She has preteen twin girls and a husband who drinks too much, but the thing she really likes to cradle at night is “the book” — the proof copy of Runway that is worked on each day and delivered to her home every evening. Runway is her true baby.
In both movies, Miranda must defend herself to avoid being replaced — by a younger French editor in the first movie and by social-media influencers and AI in the sequel.
When Miranda and her features editor Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) manage to pull off a last-ditch save of Runway in “Prada 2,” Miranda exhales in the back seat of her chauffeured car and tells Andy to go ahead and write that tell-all book about her, the gossipy book that has earned Andy a $350,000 advance.
“Include all the juicy bits,” she says — all that stuff about Miranda’s impossible demands, her verbal darts and messy relationships.
“People should know,” Miranda says. “They should know — there’s a cost…”
And then, she becomes almost impish, like she’s revealing a secret:
“But, God, I love working. Don’t you?
I just love my job.”
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She admits her ambition out loud, with no apology. Her job at Runway has been worth the personal sacrifices, and she’d do it all over again.
That line was not in the script. Streep told "USA Today" that she threw it in there because “I love working as an actor. I do. And the way that Miranda shares that insight is a little sneaky … because (for women), it’s still frowned upon that you’re going to try to do the selfish thing that is rewarding to yourself and also want to have a family. I mean, people do. I did.”
Streep was speaking for every woman who’s ever chosen work over her children, and then felt guilty or not felt guilty … but knew that her choice would be judged.
As Michelle Goldberg wrote in The New York Times: “In a less interesting movie, Priestly, with her multiple marriages and neglected family, would be a cautionary tale. But there’s little question, in this film, that Priestly is fulfilled. Like its 2006 predecessor, ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ is a romance about women and their careers.”
Sally Susman almost jumped out of her movie seat and started cheering when she heard Miranda/Meryl say “I love working, don’t you?”
“My heart lurched. I was one with her, her stubborn ambition, and desire to continue to have impact,” Susman wrote in the online magazine Oldster. ”I wanted to stand up in the darkened theater and shout ‘Yes, I do!’”
Susman, 64, was chief corporate affairs officer for Pfizer during the pandemic crisis, when the company was desperately trying to produce a vaccine. She wrote about the challenge in her 2023 memoir, “Breaking Through: Communicating to Open Minds, Move Hearts, and Change the World.”
“Courageous conversations matter,” she told me, and that includes owning our ambition — at every age.
“Ambition should not be a secret,” she says. “It’s not selfish to want to live your own life. It’s generous to be able to live your own life.”
She left her corporate job at the end of 2025 and is now entering a new chapter of work — using her own voice.
That includes redefining “retirement.” Think about it: many of us launched careers in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when we were expected to wear suits and stockings and coif our hair into practical bobs.
“Now, a sneaker is an acceptable shoe to wear almost anywhere,” Susman notes. Having long-term ambition is the “next leg of this race” to ditch outdated rules and be ourselves.
She knows many women struggle with the “A” word. As she explains:
“They worry that ambition means they’re bitchy, they’re too aggressive, they don’t think ambition is a feminine quality — and this takes on even greater resonance when you’re an older woman.”
Deborah Vance, played by Jean Smart, is another 70-something woman fighting to stay on top in “Hacks” on HBO Max.
When a stunt-gone-wrong leaves Deborah hanging from a glass cube above the Las Vegas strip, she panics and calls her comedy partner, Ava, played by Hannah Einbinder.
“I want to write the jokes. I like the work,” says Deborah, who’s also under threat from AI. “Maybe I’m crazy.”
Ava responds: “You’re crazy for your work, and that’s f-ing cool.”
I get it. I’ve got plenty of Miranda Priestly in me — and not just her obsession with clothes.
On my daughter Kate’s 10th birthday — Aug. 31, 1997 — we were celebrating with two of her friends at a Disney resort. When news broke that Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash, I woke up the kids to tell them. We all cried — then we packed up our things in the wee hours and left the resort so I could get to work at the newspaper, where I’d spend the next couple weeks editing our Princess Diana coverage.
My daughter’s birthday took second place to the news — but Kate grew up knowing that my work matters. And I just love it.
Are you retired or do you plan to keep working? Let us know in the comments below.
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