Miranda Priestly

Miranda Priestly was born Miriam Princhek on October 25 1949, in the East End of London. Her family members were poor but devout orthodox Jews. The family relied on the community for support, because her father worked odd jobs occasionally and her mother died in childbirth. Miriam's grandmother moved in with the family to assist in raising the children. Miriam saved the small bills that her siblings would give her and worked as an assistant to a British designer. She made a name for herself in London's fashion world and studied French at night and was made junior editor of the Chic magazine in Paris. When she was twenty-four Miriam changed her name to Miranda Priestly and replaced her rough accent with a sophisticated one. Miranda spent ten years at French Runway before Elias-Clark transferred her to American Runway. She, her twin daughters, and her husband moved to a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue and 76th Street. She is the editor-in-chief of Runway, a very chic and influential fashion magazine published by the Elias-Clark company. She is known for wearing a white Hermès scarf in her everyday outfit and treating her subordinates in a manner that borders on emotional and psychological abuse.

While she reminds employees "a million girls would kill for this job", Priestly's cruel treatment of staff causes a high turnover rate among personal assistants; the focus of her characterization in the book and the film being her newest assistant, recent journalism graduate Andrea Sachs.

Priestly has twin daughters (from her second of three husbands), Caroline and Cassidy, who one review suggested "look like extras from The Omen."[1]

In the film version, her past is not mentioned at all.

Miranda Priestly's personality comes in ranking as an ENTJ according to the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator.[2][3][4] Her personage has been reviewed as 'Bossy' and 'Diva', referring her as an arrogant, megalomaniac and egomaniac person.

Streep's performance was praised for making an extremely unsympathetic character far more complex than she had been in the novel. "With her silver hair and pale skin, her whispery diction as perfect as her posture, Ms. Streep's Miranda inspires both terror and a measure of awe," wrote A. O. Scott in The New York Times. "No longer simply the incarnation of evil, she is now a vision of aristocratic, purposeful and surprisingly human grace."[9] Kyle Smith agreed at the New York Post: "The snaky Streep wisely chooses not to imitate Vogue editrix Anna Wintour, the inspiration for the book, but creates her own surprisingly believable character."[10]

Liz Jones, former editor of British Marie Claire, wrote that the movie was "a chilling reminder of the most surreal three years of my life." The only detail she found inaccurate was the absence of flowers in Miranda's Paris hotel room—during her tenure as editor, her rooms there or in Milan received so many flowers from designers that she thought she "had died prematurely." She personally vouched for Miranda's personality: "It took only a few weeks in the job for me to mutate into that strangely exotic and spoilt creature: the magazine maven, whose every whim, like those of Miranda ... must be pandered to."[11]

Janet Brennan Croft of the University of Oklahoma reads the movie as a modern retelling of the Psyche myth, with Miranda in the role of Aphrodite, in which the character matures under the tutelage of an older female who at first seems purely to be tormenting her. "This authoritative female figure may even appear to be an enemy, at least at times, but actually mentors and guides [Psyche]'s growth into full participation in society." She compares the seemingly pointless tasks Miranda assigns Andy with those Aphrodite requests of Psyche: "By working through the conflict, the daughter/mentee also reaches a healthy balance of independence from and respect or love for the mother/mentor."[12]

In May 2007, the popular American daytime soap opera General Hospital introduced a new character Kate Howard (originated by Megan Ward), patterned after the character of Miranda Priestly. Kate is much like Miranda, the only noticeable difference being age.[13] Later that year, the "Money" episode from fourth season of the The Office began with Michael Scott (Steve Carell), who had just been watching the film, yelling "Steak!" and "Get me Armani!" to the Dunder-Mifflin receptionist, Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer). In February 2018, on American reality television series Keeping Up With the Kardashians (Episode 18 Season 14), Kris Jenner dressed as Miranda, channeling her 'Boss Lady' persona.[14][15]

On the film's 10th anniversary, Alyssa Rosenberg wrote for The Washington Post that Miranda anticipated female antiheroines of popular television series of the later 2000s and 2010s such as Scandal's Olivia Pope and Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. Like them, she observes, Miranda competently assumes a position of authority often held by male characters, despite her moral failings, that she must defend against attempts to use her personal life to remove her from it, to "prov[e], as a creature of sentiment, that she never belonged there in the first place." In doing so, however successfully to herself and others, "she has zipped herself into a life as regimented and limited as a skintight pencil skirt."[16] Variety' observed that "[the characterization] showed Hollywood that it was never wise to underestimate a strong woman's worth."[8]

In 2020, The Huffington Post's Monica Torres wrote about how much more she appreciated Miranda upon watching the film for the first time since her teens. Then, she had identified strongly with Andrea and hated Miranda. "But after rewatching as a working adult, I'm struck to find I have a much more complex understanding of [her], and of how many missteps her Runway staff take in their careers." Despite Andrea's dramatic break with her, Torres notes, Miranda still gives her a favorable job recommendation at the end. "That's better than most people would do for an employee who burnt a bridge!"[17]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Miranda Priestly

• Miranda Priestly role was the 14th nomination of Meryl Streep to the Academy Awards