‘The Devil Wears Prada’ Is Actually So Jewish

Something about “The Devil Wears Prada” movie felt a little Jewish to me when I first watched it back in 2006. This was long before I really thought about Jewish representation in film and TV, and long before I discovered how Jewish it actually is.

Maybe it was the fact that the script was written by Aline Brosh McKenna, who would go on to co-create one of the shows that made me feel seen as a young Jewish woman, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.”

Maybe it was because Anne Hathaway’s character was named Andy Sachs, and that since “The Princess Diaries,” where she has frizzy hair and is awkward, I always felt there was something a little Jewish-coded about the actress, who would go on to marry Jewish actor and producer Adam Shulman, raise Jewish kids and play Jewish mothers while taking inspiration from her mother-in-law.

Maybe, maybe. Or maybe, I later discovered, it’s because — just like Meg Cabot’s “The Princess Diaries,” — the original “The Devil Wears Prada” book by Lauren Weisberger is actually quite Jewish.

How Jewish is it, you ask?

Well, first of all, Andy Sachs is indeed a Connecticut Jew; in her first interview with Miranda, she tells her she speaks a second language, Hebrew. Her family has traditional Jewish feasts of bagels and lox on the night before Thanksgiving. And when Andy’s mom confronts her about her magazine workaholism, Andy recounts that she can feel “an avalanche of Jewish mother guilt” ready to slide in her direction.

Brosh McKenna, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and an Israeli immigrant, said that at the time she wrote the script for the movie, she could not have made any characters explicitly Jewish.

“Andy Sachs in [“The Devil Wears Prada”] is certainly Jewish. Sachs is my grandmother’s name, and Lauren Weisberger is Jewish. That’s a story about a Jewish woman, but that’s never mentioned, nor would that have ever been mentioned 12 years ago when the movie came out,” she said on the Mash-Up Americans podcast.

Andy, in fact, is a very loosely painted version of Weisberger herself. Like Andy, she worked for Vogue; like Andy, she was raised Jewish outside of New York (in Pennsylvania, not Connecticut). Weisberger is a graduate of Parkland High School in Allentown. Just like Andy, she travelled the world after college (travels that included a visit to Israel) before getting a job as an assistant for Anna Wintour at Vogue, after whom Miranda Priestly feels like she’s based on, even if Weisberger has denied it in the past.

Speaking of Miranda Priestly — she, too, is Jewish in the book. In fact, her birth name is Miriam Pirchek. Miriam was born in London’s East End, the youngest of 11. When her mother died in childbirth, her grandmother swooped in to help raise the kids.

“Hers was like all the other Orthodox Jewish families in the town, stunningly poor but devout. Her father occasionally worked odd jobs, but mostly they relied on the community for support since he spent most of his days studying Jewish texts,” Weisberger writes of Miranda’s humble origins.

Unlike her siblings, who went on work blue collar jobs (some eked their way into university) but married young and had children, Miriam decides to drop out of high school and pursue a career in London’s fashion world, climbing up the ladder and landing a job in a fancy Parisian magazine, where she reinvents herself as Miranda Priestly, leaving behind her Cockney accent and her Jewish name.

When we meet Miranda in the book as the bossy and commanding head of Runway magazine, she wants nothing to do with her Jewish roots. Perhaps that’s why when Andy tells her she speaks Hebrew, Miranda responds with an icy: “Hebrew? I was hoping for French, or at least something more useful.”

It’s wild to think of how different “The Devil Wears Prada” movies could be if both these characters were allowed to be Jewish. Not that I’d really want to change anything about that first movie — it is a cinematic masterpiece. And yes, we can always kvell that it was brought to us from Jewish director David Frankel and Jewish screenwriter Brosh-McKenna, both very connected to their Jewish heritage. But still… imagine if the film allowed its main characters’ Judaism to really shine.

In “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” there’s not much Judaism to be seen. It was partially shot in Billy Joel’s former home, and a keen observer may spot a mezuzah in a scene or two. But at least one heartwarming Jewish moment occurred behind the scenes.

On the Common Faith podcast, B.J. Novak and director David Frankel shared this sweet story with hosts Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove and Jon Frankel (who yes, is David’s brother). Apparently, the film shot during the High Holidays in Milan, and Novak, Frankel and some other Jewish members of the cast and crew decided to find a High Holiday service. They found one in English, Hebrew and Italian held in a conference room of a hotel led by a married couple: a rabbi originally from Sherman Oaks, California and his husband, who now live mostly in Israel.

“They were very open and warm… and I felt like a good Jew, and I went out for great pasta… It wasn’t apple and honey, but it was something,” Novak recalled.

It’s not an explicitly Jewish scene in “The Devil Wears Prada 2” — but as Novak says — it’s something!