Real-Life Emily Who Inspired ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ Character Speaks Out
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.
00:00 - Introducing Leslie Fremar
00:39 - Opening up about The Devil Wears Prada
01:43 - Styling Charlize Theron
04:04 - Styling for a press tour
05:11 - Starting at Vogue
11:58 - Promoted to First Assistant
13:16 - First year of working with Anna
15:28 - The book
17:07 - The real Emily
17:45 - Learning about the book
22:28 - The real Andy Sachs
23:48 - Fact vs Fiction
26:22 - Did she travel to Paris?
29:30 - Dry cleaning
30:30 - Harry Potter transcript
30:16 - Office reaction to The Devil Wears Prada
32:10 - The movie adaptation
34:31 - Cerulean blue sweater
35:21 - Gawker article
36:30 - Complicated feelings
37:48 - Why talk about it now?
38:20 - Meeting Emily Blunt
40:08 - Crying in front of Anna Wintour
42:54 - Styling Vogue cover with Kamala Harris
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