With “The Devil Wears Prada 2″ set to premiere on Friday, the real-life person who inspired the “Emily” character from the original 2006 film has stepped forward to reveal her identity.
Celebrity stylist Leslie Fremar revealed that she was the inspiration for “Emily,” the assistant to Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly in “The Devil Wears Prada," according to The Hollywood Reporter. The character, played in the movie by Emily Blunt, was a colleague of Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs character.
Lauren Weisberger released the bestselling 2003 novel that was adapted into the film. She served as a junior assistant to Anna Wintour, 76, who was editor-in-chief of Vogue from 1988 to 2025.
Fremar hired Weisberger and worked with her for eight months, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Fremar appeared on Vogue’s podcast, "The Run-Through‚" to discuss the book and movie. She insisted she was the “Emily” character, “Today” reported.
“I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about it,” Fremar said during the podcast. “She’s me -- I am Emily.”
Fremar referenced a memorable line from the movie.
“I definitely told (Weisberger) a million girls would kill for the job,” she said. “That was definitely my line because I actually really believed that, and I knew that she didn’t necessarily wanna be there.”
Fremar said she didn’t learn about the release of Weisberger’s book until she had already left Vogue, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“I got a call from Anna’s office saying that she wanted to see me,” Fremar recalled. “I was petrified. (Wintour) said, ‘Who’s Lauren Weisberger?’ And I said, ‘She was your junior assistant.’ And she’s like, ‘Well, she wrote a book about us, and you’re worse than me.’”
The early copy of the book was “quite mean” at first but eventually “softened,” Fremar said.
“It just felt like this exposure. Even though someone obviously advised her to make it fiction, it was really based off of a lot of things that, you know, I lived, she lived.”
Fremar told “Today” that she saw the movie, adding that it did a “great job of fictionalizing” the world she worked in.
The real-life Emily from "The Devil Wears Prada" reveals herself as celebrity stylist Leslie Fremar and speaks out for the first time: "[The book] felt like a betrayal."
— Variety (@Variety) April 29, 2026
“I definitely told [author Lauren Weisberger, the inspiration for Andy Sachs] that a million girls would kill… pic.twitter.com/PJrgCmDXXn
“I think people that knew me at the time, even PR (professionals) or (anyone) working at brands, they all knew that it was me,” she said. “But it was fictionalized, so I was able, mentally, to separate myself from it where I didn’t feel like it was this horrible betrayal of me, per se.”
Fremar said she has not spoken to Weisberger since the “Prada” author left Vogue, according to “Today.” She added if they did, it would be “very awkward.”
In an essay for Vogue published on Tuesday, Weisberger said if she wrote the book in 2026, it would be “more layered.”
“I have more empathy now -- for the assistants and the bosses, for the 20-somethings trying to prove themselves, and for those who already have,“ she wrote. ”That kind of understanding comes only with time, experience, and a few hard-earned recalibrations,” Weisberger wrote. “Still, the version of me who wrote that book had something I cannot easily access now: unfiltered honesty. There is a boldness that comes from being young and outraged.
“You’re less careful, less diplomatic, not as concerned with the consequences. And there is real power in that.”
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