{"id":406192,"date":"2026-05-01T05:23:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T05:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/406192\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T05:23:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T05:23:15","slug":"stylist-confirms-it-shes-the-real-emily-from-devil-wears-prada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/406192\/","title":{"rendered":"Stylist confirms it: She’s the real Emily from ‘Devil Wears Prada’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cI know I am, yes. I am Emily.\u201d<\/p>\n

So says Leslie Fremar, outing herself as the real-life inspiration for Emily, the uptight first assistant to fictional magazine editor Miranda Priestly. Emily is played in the movie \u201cThe Devil Wears Prada\u201d and its new sequel by actor Emily Blunt.<\/p>\n

Fremar went on the record in a podcast that dropped Wednesday, talking with Chloe Malle on Vogue\u2019s \u201cThe Run-Through<\/a>\u201d just before \u201cThe Devil Wears Prada 2<\/a>\u201d hits theaters. <\/p>\n

A Toronto native who started at Vogue<\/a> and, ironically, worked for a while as director of celebrity relations at Prada, Fremar is now stylist to celebrities including Charlize Theron, Jennifer Connelly and Julianne Moore. But in 1999, she was in her first job, assisting the magazine\u2019s editor in chief, Anna Wintour, and helping to train the woman who would ultimately write the novel that became the film.<\/p>\n

Not that she would be able to chit-chat pleasantly with Leslie Weisberger now if \u201cThe Devil Wears Prada\u201d novelist were to walk into the room. <\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Hired fresh out of college in 1999, Leslie Fremar \u2014 seen in 2016 \u2014 was second assistant to Vogue\u2019s Anna Wintour and, upon being made first assistant, hired the woman who would write the book \u201cThe Devil Wears Prada.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Frederick M. Brown \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it would be very awkward,\u201d Fremar said on the podcast. \u201cI mean, I don\u2019t hold a grudge towards her, but it\u2019s just, it became something that I don\u2019t think she knew that I knew. And so I think it would just \u2014 there\u2019s nothing to be said.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fremar, who moved into the magazine\u2019s fashion department after being Wintour\u2019s junior and then first assistant, found out about the book when the editor in chief called her into the office and asked her, \u201cWho\u2019s Leslie Weisberger?\u201d Fremar said she reminded Wintour that Weisberger had been her second assistant for about eight months. <\/p>\n

Wintour replied, \u201cWell, she wrote a book about us, and you\u2019re worse than me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Vogue editor \u2014 she\u2019s since been elevated to chief content officer for Cond\u00e9 Nast and global editorial director of Vogue \u2014 gave the galley, a pre-publication version of the book, to her former assistant to read. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was actually quite mean, the galley, and I think obviously an editor came in [later] and really softened it. … It felt quite dark, I remember thinking, and I found that quite hurtful,\u201d Fremar told Malle. \u201cI think what got put into the world is a much lighter, nicer version of what she actually wrote. … I remember feeling like it was a betrayal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ouch. <\/p>\n

But Fremar owned her part in inspiring the Emily character, saying, \u201cI think this idea that the Emily character is not very pleasant or nice or seems high strung is because 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fremar guessed that Weisberger, who made it known she wanted to be a writer and had been told by Cond\u00e9 Nast HR to take a certain writing class, \u201cwas probably just sitting there writing a book and not necessarily taking the job as seriously as I did. Or you know, a hundred million girls would. So I think that that probably created some tension in the office where maybe I would snap at her. … She just didn\u2019t wanna play the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the movie, Fremar said that its \u201cfantasy element\u201d made it possible for her to enjoy it as entertainment, rather than the galley that stung her feelings. But their time working together was real life. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think I was always trying to remind her that this was something to take seriously or I took it seriously. And she really didn\u2019t. So that really frustrated me,\u201d Fremar said. \u201cI was like, this is a huge international business. This is like an art form to lots of people. People get dressed every day as an expression of like who they are. I took that seriously even though, you know, obviously I know I\u2019m not curing anything. It was important to me. Not being important to her just really irked me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anybody not seeing and hearing Emily Blunt in their mind at this moment is clearly not a \u201cPrada\u201d fan. Though the stylist\u2019s accent is only slightly Canadian, not British at all. <\/p>\n

Fremar credits her time working under Wintour for setting up the career she\u2019s enjoyed since then, calling the editor her \u201cmentor through and through.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned everything that I know from Anna. I would actually give her full credit for the way that my life turned out. And I\u2019m very happy with how my life turned out. So I\u2019m very grateful to Anna,\u201d she said. \u201cI think the way she ran her office without it feeling personal, I still do that to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plus, Wintour brought her back to Vogue ahead of the Biden administration to style her first-ever cover of the mother ship magazine, which featured Kamala Harris, then vice president-elect,<\/a> and brought things full circle. <\/p>\n

But the stylist has the receipts that prove she is the Emily to Wintour\u2019s Miranda. Requests for things that weren\u2019t available \u2014 say, an unpublished \u201cHarry Potter\u201d manuscript, if the timing were right \u2014 really did happen at Vogue in the aughts. Yes, Wintour ate rare steak and potatoes from a nearby restaurant. Yes, the assistants would handle Wintour\u2019s dry cleaning. And yes, \u201cit was such panic\u201d before she arrived at the office. But no, neither assistant ever accompanied Wintour to Paris for Fashion Week. <\/p>\n

Anna always traveled solo, she said, and was aided by a woman from the magazine\u2019s Paris office once she got there. \u201cFiona,\u201d Malle said, is still on the job in France. <\/p>\n

And although Wintour has had many assistants, Fremar said she\u2019s publicly tagging herself as that assistant 20 years after the first film came out because \u201cthere\u2019s all this speculation, everyone really enjoyed the movie, Anna\u2019s clearly embracing it. And so why not? You know, just put it out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not really worried about the repercussions. … That stuff really doesn\u2019t bother me.\u201d <\/p>\n

Plus maybe, just maybe, it\u2019s an opportunity for her to claim authorship of one of the original movie\u2019s most well-known lines. <\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely told [Weisberger] a million girls would kill for the job. … That was definitely my line \u2019cause I actually really believed that,\u201d Fremar said. \u201cAnd I knew that she didn\u2019t necessarily wanna be there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI know I am, yes. I am Emily.\u201d So says Leslie Fremar, outing herself as the real-life inspiration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[65058,430,20968,152785,32896,21982,156,209217,209216,209215,209218,435,111,139,69,6270,19313,72775,72026,194615],"class_list":["post-406192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-anna-wintour","tag-celebrities","tag-charlize-theron","tag-devil","tag-editor","tag-emily","tag-entertainment","tag-first-job","tag-former-assistant","tag-leslie-fremar","tag-leslie-weisberger","tag-movie","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-office","tag-prada","tag-stylist","tag-vogue","tag-wintour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}