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<\/a>Cameo\u2019ing at \u201cMiranda Priestly\u2019s Oyster Bay estate\u201d: left, Karl-Anthony Towns, TB, Suleika Jaouad. Right, between takes with the mighty Meryl<\/p>\nYou can see me as a teeny cameo in the film, milling around in a fancy lunch party scene at Miranda\u2019s Oyster Bay estate. I was called last summer to join a buzz cluster of the likes of podcast queen Kara Swisher, politics scribe Molly Jong-Fast, New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, musician and composer Jon Batiste and his Substacker wife Suleika Jaouad, Today show\u2019s Jenna Bush Hager, and NBA giant Karl-Anthony Towns. We all va-voomed around with cast members Ken Branagh as Miranda\u2019s screen husband, Tibor Feldman playing the unassuming Si Newhouse figure who owns Runway, Anne Hathaway\u2014reprising her Andy Sachs\/Priestley assistant role but all grown up and now supposedly a prize-winning reporter\u2014wearing the colorful checkerboard dress Stanley Tucci\u2019s Nigel has filched for her from the magazine\u2019s fashion closet, and, of course, miraculous Meryl looking so airy and slight in a blue linen shirt over tight white jeans and Puma sneakers and that flippy, cropped, silver Miranda hair that I couldn\u2019t believe was a wig. (She said it screws up into a tiny ball when she takes it off. All the volume comes from her own hair in the stocking underneath. A masterpiece of creative hairdressing.)<\/p>\n
It was a boiling day, and the Devilmobile picked me up at 4 a.m. to drive to the glorious Gatsby house by the lake that had been commandeered for the shoot. Even though I grew up with a film-producer father, I am always stunned at what a vast, teeming enterprise a movie set is. The DWP2 base camp was like a forward operation for a U.S. military war game. Acres of car park filled with caravans and convoys and minions with swinging lanyards racing to and fro. Multiple emails with the movie\u2019s costume honcho who preapproved my \u201clook,\u201d\u200b not the bank-busting pastel Stella McCartney pantsuit I anticipated but a floaty, goldy chiffon number from the back of my closet.\u200b The costume department supplied jewelry, some divine pewter bangles I tried to order until I found they were $2,500 each, some fat gold beads I tracked down afterwards, and a clutch bag with raffia stalactites hanging off. \u201cShall I use the shoulder strap?\u201d I asked the costumier. \u201cNo, under the arm. It\u2019s more bitch,\u201d he said. Jenna Bush Hager showed up in a wonderful cream lace skirt that I ravenously ordered online the next day, but, on me, looked like a voluminous Victorian tablecloth.<\/p>\n
At \u201cMiranda\u2019s estate\u201d was a long picnic table set for a strenuously tasteful summer lunch of lobster with corn and baby potatoes, a feast that we cameos could only toy with because the scene was shot over and over again, starting at 9 a.m. and lasting well into a day that got hotter and hotter. I was squeezed between Suleika Jaouad, who is as empathetic and artistic and direct as her musician husband Jon was outlandish and otherworldly in his green tapestry suit. On my other side was Karl-Anthony Towns, whom, as a sports dunce, I had never heard of. We soon got into a conversation about player trading and how he could be on a plane to Florida and find out when he landed that he had been traded to the Lakers. I asked if he would have any say in the matter, and he said none. I was aghast and ready to be fired up about the appalling exploitation of athletes, until a sports lawyer friend asked if I knew how much Towns is paid (approximately $53 million, according to Google) and urged me not to make celebrity sports trades my next advocacy campaign. During one steamy break, I talked to Meryl about the agony of her Met Ball scene, where she was required to climb the museum\u2019s exterior steps in a ballooning red taffeta gown and stilettos fifteen times between 9 p.m. and midnight, with crowds shouting \u201cMer\u2013yl\u201d at her, and she fell into a frothy fabric heap, generating a viral photo she had to pretend was hilarious. Let no one ever tell you that actors don\u2019t work their asses off.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, as the afternoon wore on, we suddenly heard the chimes of a piano and rushed inside. Jon Batiste had discovered a baby grand in the library and was thundering away with a rousing concerto, his hands rapturously flying over the keys, his head thrown back, an entranced artist oblivious to anything but the music. We listened, mesmerized by this wonderful moment of random magic.<\/p>\n By 2 p.m., however, we cameo-istas were in a somewhat mutinous mood. The lobster and baby potatoes were looking ominously old. Between setups, we congregated downstairs in a room adjacent to the\u200b kitchen. There was no air conditioning in this period mansion, nor enough food for starving media mavens. The ever fearless Swisher led us in a call to order out, even though it was verboten by the house owners. A few wilting cameos gathered in the refrigerated wine cellar, as if hiding from an active shooter. Jenna Bush Hager shared that whenever Trump\u2019s name comes up at dinner with her father, former president George W. Bush, he says, \u201cWhy spoil a good meal?\u201d As if underlining the media world of the movie and the real media world today, Molly Jong-Fast kept checking her phone for the names of the three West Coast writers, plus her editor, who had just been fired by the new Vanity Fair editor, Mark Guiducci. Our silver-screen high point came at the end of a collapsed-hair afternoon when Meryl\u2019s character walked Hathaway\u2019s character around the cameo group to prove she was now seen as Runway\u2019s rising star. I was told to murmur something about having noticed Andy\/Anne\u2019s viral piece in Runway and say archly, \u201cI\u2019ve been watching your byline, Andy.\u201d There were so many failed attempts, it reminded me of when I had a CNBC TV show called Topic A and it took 20 takes to look straight into the camera and say with\u200b any semblance of conviction, \u201cAnd THIS is Topic A.\u201d I tell this to explain why I ended up in the film as a mute guest at Miranda Priestly\u2019s tony lunch party. It was a nerve-flayed 8 p.m. by the time we wrapped.<\/p>\n<\/a>Cameo queens Suleika Jaouad, Jenna Bush Hager, and Kara Swisher <\/p>\n<\/a>The Fall Girl: movie trooper Meryl\u2019s stilettos let her down in a take for the Met Ball scene (credit: TheStewartofNY via Getty Images)<\/p>\n