Meryl Streep wasn’t channeling Anna Wintour in her iconic “Devil Wears Prada” role — but rather Mike Nichols and Clint Eastwood.
The actress, 76, shared her surprise inspiration for her Miranda Priestly character with “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” viewers Thursday.
The Golden Globe winner defined her “calm” character as what would happen “if [those actors] had a baby.”
Stephen Colbert quipped, “I’d watch that movie.”
She explained her inspiration came from their time working together on “The Bridges of Madison County,” explaining, “Clint would never raise his voice.
“He would direct and people had to lean forward to hear what he was saying,” she noted, adding that this left people “on the edge of their seats” and the “balls of their feet.”
The Oscar winner has never shared her thought process with Eastwood, 95, but did tell Nichols, 83, that Priestly embodied his “command on set” — which “thrilled” the late comedian, who died in 2014.
“Mike would do it sort of with a sly humor,” she noted. “Miranda, she knows what she’s saying is sort of snide, but she knows it’s kind of funny too.
“That little way of doing this, people take as mean, but it’s funny,” the Tony nominee continued. “I think it’s funny.”
Streep first played Priestly in 2006’s “Devil Wears Prada,” alongside Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci and Adrian Grenier.
She reprises the role in the hit film’s sequel, out May 1.
The first trailer for “The Devil Wears Prada 2” dropped in November 2025.
Three months later, Streep joked to People that she should “get a Medal of Freedom” for spending 16 weeks wearing heels for the role.
She described the character’s wardrobe in the February interview as her same look from before — “but adapted … with time.”
While many of the cast members returned for the upcoming movie, Adrian Grenier — who played Hathaway’s character Andrea Sachs’ boyfriend, Nate, in the original — was not asked back.
“Obviously, it was a disappointment,” he told Page Six last month. “There’s some backlash with Nate, the character, so that might have something to do with it.”
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