Stanley Tucci is proud to own the title of “biggest diva” on the set of The Devil Wears Prada 2.
In response to co-star Anne Hathaway referring to him as an on-set diva, Tucci leaned into the title, adding that there’s “no question” of his diva status. “I’m awful,” Tucci told People. “Just terrible.”
Tucci is a diva because “he’s so fussy about his clothes,” Hathaway said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. While Tucci’s character Nigel Kipling is indeed fussy about clothes, Nigel is far from a diva, especially after he reacted graciously to some devastating career news at the end of the film. When the news was announced at a large gathering in Paris, Nigel remained loyal to his boss, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), famously saying, “When the time is right, she’ll pay me back.” To which Hathaway’s character Andrea Sachs replies, “You sure about that?”
Nearly every actor returned for the sequel, including Tucci’s real-life sister-in-law, Emily Blunt, who reprised her high-strung character Emily Charlton. She recalled how Tucci would joke with her when he thought she was over-acting. “Stan would be like, ‘You’re shameless. Shameless,'” Blunt recalled to E!.
“Stan and I were so angry that they didn’t give us more to do together,” Blunt continued. “If we do another one, they better have us joined at the hip. I love him. They let us have a free rein to improv whatever we wanted, which was probably a terrible mistake, because we ruined endless tapes. A lot of the scenes were unusable because we were laughing so much. He’s heaven.”
The Devil Wears Prada ended with Nigel returning to Runway Magazine in the same capacity, and Andrea moved on in her career. The sequel revisits the characters, years later as Miranda “navigates her career amid the decline of traditional magazine publishing and as she faces off against Blunt’s character, now a high-powered executive for a luxury group with advertising dollars that Priestly desperately needs.”
The Devil Wears Prada 2 opens in theaters on May 1.
