Gird your loins: the 20-years-in-the-making sequel The Devil Wears Prada 2 finally hits theaters today! The first movie pretty much became an instant cult classic; everyone learned the precise color frequency of cerulean blue, and the two seemingly innocuous words “That’s all” would never be the same again. As we all know, the movie was adapted from a book of the same name by Lauren Weisberger. Lauren fashioned her eight-month stint at Vogue as Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour’s second assistant into the best-selling book, with protagonist Andy Sachs stepping into Lauren’s shoes heels, while Miranda Priestly embodied the devil editor. But who was the woman behind first assistant Emily Charlton? Well, just in time for DWP2, Vogue’s current EIC Chloe Malle persuaded OG Emily to reveal herself: meet Leslie Fremar, the woman who really did utter the words, “A million girls would kill for this job.” Leslie went on to become a stylist — she works regularly with Charlize Theron — but took a candid stroll down memory lane in a new interview with Chloe. So, is DWP an honest account of life at Vogue? Recollections may vary…
In the late 1990s, a bright-eyed Leslie Fremar—fresh off a promotion to Anna Wintour’s first assistant after just six months—found herself in a position to hire a deputy. A few years later, Fremar was reading an advance copy of The Devil Wears Prada… and realized she’d been written into its pages.
“She’s me—I am Emily,” she tells Chloe on this week’s episode of The Run-Through with Vogue. “I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about it.”Now a stylist for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars—most notably Charlize Theron, a longtime collaborator—Fremar recalls how intimidating her early days at Vogue were. “There were rules passed down to me: I couldn’t eat at my desk. You couldn’t even go to the bathroom, because one of the assistants always had to be there,” she says.
When she stepped into the first assistant role, Fremar loosened things slightly—she even kept a pair of Birkenstocks under her desk. “I think [Anna] knew I would do that,” she says. “I don’t know if I could survive a full day in heels.” She also passed along some pointed advice to her junior assistant: “A million girls would kill for this job,” she recalls saying—a line she still stands by.
When Lauren Weisberger published the novel, Fremar admits she felt betrayed. “We’ve never talked about it—we never spoke again after she left.” Still, she says she doesn’t hold a grudge. Asked what she would say if they spoke today, Fremar is matter-of-fact: “There’s nothing to be said.”
Other parts of her Vogue experience inspire less ambivalence. More than 25 years after her time as an assistant, Fremar received a call from Wintour with an extraordinary opportunity: to style a Vogue cover featuring former Vice President Kamala Harris. “I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and styled many international covers, but never American Vogue,” she says. “It felt like a true full-circle moment—and probably my proudest.”
If you can spare 45 minutes, the tea spilled in this interview is sublime! Leslie Fremar is clearly a very reserved person, but Chloe Malle asks all the right questions to get to the juicy stuff. Like when she presses Leslie to recall how she and Anna found out about the book: Anna was given a galley copy, and summoned Leslie to her office where she first asked Leslie, “Who is Lauren Weisberger?” And Leslie reminded her that Lauren was her assistant for eight months, lol. Then Anna said, “Well, she wrote a book about us and you’re worse than me.” HA. Leslie got to take the galley home to read, and she says that early draft was much meaner and darker than what was eventually published. When Chloe started asking about fact vs fiction in the book, Leslie said, “I think the fiction part of the book is that this character turns into this superstar. And I did not witness that,” referring to Lauren/Andy Sachs. Oh, the shade of it all!
Other fun details: Leslie was no longer at Vogue by the time the first movie came out, guess where she was working? PRADA! Oh, and it wasn’t just that Anna invited Leslie to style VP Kamala Harris for the October 2024 cover — Anna recommended Leslie to Kamala’s team when they had reached out looking for a stylist for the campaign. Between that and another anecdote Leslie shared about Anna securing her visa (Leslie is Canadian), I’d say it’s time to give those “Ice Queen” nicknames a good long thaw.
Photos are screenshots from YouTube and Vogue.com and credit Getty Images
