The Interviews (ft. David Frankel & BenDavid Grabinski)

0:00My name is Mackenzie and I started a GoFundMe for the adoptive mother of a nonverbal autistic child. The mother had lost her job because she wasn't able to find adequate care for this autistic child. So she really needed some help with living expenses, paying some back bills. So I launched a GoFundMe to help support them during this crisis. And we raised about$10 ,000 within just a couple of months. I think that the surprising thing was by telling a clear story and just like really being very clear about what we needed. We had some really generous donations from people who were really moved by the situation that this family was struggling with.

0:46GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. That's GoFundMe.com. GoFundMe.com. This podcast is supported by GoFundMe.

1:14Hello Pod, I'm Chris Hewitt and welcome to the latest episode of The Interviews, the Empire Podcast spin-off show which gathers the cream of the crop of our chats with filmdom's finest. That is a mouthful I need to work on that. It's the shortest show this week, but no less ace as we speak to not one but two directors. First up, this week sees the release of The Devil Wears Prada 2, the long-awaited sequel to 2006's, yes, you guessed it, The Devil Wears Prada, the movie that saw Anne Hathaway go toe-to-toe at a fashion magazine with its tyrannical editor, Meryl Streep. Already a hit at the time, Over the last 20 years or so, the film's audience and cultural impact has grown and grown and grown.

1:58There's a West End musical with songs by Elton John to prove that. If you don't believe me, it's a lot of fun. Go check it out. And now the gang is all here for another go. That includes David Frankel, who directed the original. And we sent Helena Hara along to have a chat with Frankel when he came into London recently. This is obviously not a spoiler special interview, but they do discuss by name some of the A-list cameos in this film. So if you don't want that to be spoiled, maybe wait until you see the film. And if you don't care, have a listen now. My name is Mackenzie and I started a GoFundMe for the adoptive mother of a nonverbal autistic child.

2:38the mother had lost her job because she wasn't able to find adequate care for this autistic child. So she really needed some help with living expenses, paying some back bills. So I launched a GoFundMe to help support them during this crisis. And we raised about$10 ,000 within just a couple of months. I think that the surprising thing was by telling a clear story and just like really being very clear about what we needed. We had some really generous donations from people who were really moved by the situation that this family was struggling with. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform trusted by over 200 million people.

3:23Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. That's GoFundMe.com. GoFundMe.com. This podcast is supported by GoFundMe. Well, hello, David. How are you doing? I'm great to see you. I love the red shoes. This is very on-brand. Yeah, well, it was a gift, but they're proud of trainers yes yeah that was you know my brother and sister-in-law pre-premier gift the other day amazing so 20 years later um is this a legacy sequel or do you just see this as a sequel is there a difference i don't know i don't know how you define legacy sequel i mean we you know we never imagined that we would do a sequel and and aline brush mckenna and i the screenwriter um really um spurned every entreaty to explore it.

4:07We didn't want to sully the memory of the first movie. We just, you know, lightning in a bottle, people love it. Okay, fine. Let's not ruin that. And

4:21it was only in the last couple of years that we realized maybe there is another story to tell, You know, because the world of fashion and the world of journalism has changed so much and there are new issues. And, you know, it was important you make a movie that's entertaining and funny and glamorous, but it's also got to be about something. Yeah. And, you know, we realized, oh, there are really interesting themes that are really relevant to the culture today that this pop movie can explore. Yeah. That's one of the things that really struck me about, well, re-watching the first one and then going straight in and watching this one is, you know, I think, like you say, people think of it as a little bit fluffy because it's about fashion and it's a young girl and we're sort of conditioned to think a certain way about those kind of movies.

5:14but you know the first one dealt with the business of fashion and the seriousness of that business in quite a real way this one really gets into some you know it touches on i'm not saying it dwells on but it touches on some kind of things about affordability and like luxury pricing and obviously the state of the media right now um was always important to have that kind of balance and yeah you know i mean andy has a speech in the middle of the movie and she says you know she's just frustrated you know another publication deleted you know and we just can't keep tearing these things down and repackaging them and where does it end and you know it's a question that we all ask you know it's like this move from print to digital okay you know we accept that but what are the sacrifices what are the costs what are we losing and um you know it's it's kind of what the internet has done to every part of the culture is, yeah, it's convenient.

6:11We can find our way without a map and we can text at will, but have we lost so much human connection? And now we're about to potentially lose human creativity because the digital, the technology is about to overtake that also. And so, you know, it's really a cry in the dark, you know, like, you know, this caveat, you know, let's be careful that we're not moving too fast and all is lost. Yeah, but fun. But fun, yeah, exactly, yeah. It's a testament to great screenwriting that, you know, that all those themes are in the movie And yet it's full of jokes and glamour and great music and it's very entertaining.

7:02And honestly, you know, we hope leaves you wanting more. Absolutely. I'm already obsessed with at least like four different outfits in the movie that I need to find the cheap versions of that I can afford. Amazing. But like tell me then about getting everyone back on board for that because it sounds like, you know, I mean, everyone is back for a start, which is quite rare in these kind of cases. I feel like, you know, did they come in with like requests for their characters and things they wanted to sort of know? I mean, first of all, we would not have done it if it wasn't getting the whole family.

7:34You know, it's a band, you know, it's the Beatles. You couldn't do it without, you know, George and Ringo. But we started with Meryl, obviously, because, you know, without Miranda, there's no movie. And and once we presented the idea that there is a fun story, but also something that has relevance, And she was really keen to explore it. And then it was really like one phone call to Annie and to Emily and to Stanley. And they all were very excited to join it. They did have requests. You know, they were fascinated. I mean, you know, at one point we talked, maybe Andy had gotten married and divorced and had kids.

8:13And Annie had a whole different vision for what her experience was, Andy's life over the last 20 years. Uh, Emily was thrilled to, you know, still play a, you know, mean, mean girl, if you will. Uh, you know, she had one great suggestion when she read the script, which was, um, that we'd missed an opportunity to have all four of them in a scene together. Uh, you know, and even though the story doesn't always bring them together, there was one moment early that made sense. And so that was a rewrite that we did on her suggestion. Yeah, that was very, very satisfying, I feel like, to get everyone back.

8:57Have they changed a lot? Because they were, especially Annie and Emily, were baby actresses at this point. They were 22. And yeah, they were girls. It was Emily's first big movie. And Annie had done Princess Diaries before. But it was the first. I mean, she was in every scene of that first movie and worked her ass off every day. um but yeah that you know that i think you see that in their performances here there there's a maturity and there's a confidence i mean they're just you know now they're global movie stars and they've they've made many more movies than i have over the last 20 years uh and um but you know what i admire so much is that they bring the same enthusiasm uh as women and moms now that they brought when they were kids and uh you know their their work ethic is the same i mean there's a and their charisma is even greater than it was you know so um you know if anything they're they're you know they're better than they than they ever were and it was nice as well seeing um not only miranda back but also nigel back and once again kind of being the heart and soul and the kind of grounding force for all of these you know quite high slung high strung uh characters yeah um yeah and stanley is um i mean it is the gift that just keeps on giving you know he was the last person cast in the first movie yeah i mean we i you know for to blame you know it's completely my fault but we didn't cast him until we were four weeks into the shoot you know not yeah we were three days away from shooting Nigel and there was no Nigel.

10:38And I went to lunch with Stanley and I said, oh yeah, he's going to be amazing. And yeah, it's just so effortless with him, honestly, or at least he makes it look that way. But he's so soulful and so funny. And what's nice is that after 20 years, there's so much more resonance to their relationship. You know, we've, as an audience, we fill in the blanks. And so, you know, when moments happen between them and you understand like how long he's been her number two and how long he's been disappointed and how many times, you know, there's a real way to it. And, you know, I love that we were able to bring that much emotion to a comedy.

11:24What was it that took so long the first time? Was it just pinning down exactly what Nigel was or who Nigel was? Yeah. You know, it was, I met, you know, hundreds of men. And the character kept changing. And Aline kept rewriting the character. And eventually we landed in sort of exactly the right place. And yeah, and he walked in and no preparation. And Patricia Field gave him this huge ring that he put on. And he said, okay, I've got the character, you know. And it was just that simple. Yeah, the scene that he shot first is the scene in the hotel room where he's telling Andy, I'm going to go work with James Holden, I'm going to finally get to see Paris.

12:15And that was literally the first moment that he was Nigel. Yeah, that's a heartbreaking one to go back to as well. You're just like, oh, poor Nigel. Anyway, tell me about sort of gathering cameos this time, because I feel like, I don't know, but it feels like the fashion industry as well as the movie industry has really embraced this story in all the years since. I imagine, you know, I imagine you had your pick of people, but maybe it was a little bit of a scheduling nightmare to get those people. It was always, yeah, it was a bit of a nightmare to get everybody in the right place at the right time, but it was also a thrill.

12:50And I think we're sort of making up for the fact that in the first movie, it was so hard to get anybody to participate. And we were really fortunate that a handful, you know, Giselle or Heidi Klum and especially Valentino and his team came at the very last minute to be a part of the movie. And it elevated it so much to have just that degree of authenticity and to understand, you know, to see Miranda in a world that felt quite real. And the whole movie gained strength from that. And I wanted to show that this is the world of a high-powered magazine editor, that they're bold-faced names wherever you go.

13:34And especially just when she's relaxing in the Hamptons, she's not just going to have her neighbors over for tea. She's going to have the most interesting people she knows and a fantastic assortment. And then obviously, when Irv is being celebrated, there's a lot of people. My favorite, of course, is having Rory McIlroy appear with his wife, Erica. So that was thrilling for me. I'm a golfer. I'm John Batiste in the Hamptons and Donatella in Milan. It just was really fun. Yeah. And I loved, I mean, no spoilers, but I loved the Lady Gaga appearance as well. Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, that obviously was special.

14:14and it was Aline had written, you know, a pop star performs. And we went to the studio and go, well, there's one pop star we'd love to get. And, you know, fortunately she turned out to be a fan of the first movie and was thrilled to collaborate with her. And she kind of plays a little role as herself as well. It's not just a performance. Yeah, I know. And Aline invented this nasty backstory for her and Miranda and she was really keen to play it. That's awesome. um i hear that anna winter uh visited the set is it true that she gave you notes on flowers yes completely true yeah she came one day we were shooting in the dior offices and um we had decorated the office with flowers and and she turned to a lean where she was you know sitting at the monitor and said oh dior would never have um this many flowers and they would only have white flowers and so the designers went around swapping out flowers at the last minute and you know again you know it's part of our effort to be as authentic as possible so any suggestion that you know makes it real or we were happy to embrace yeah and she would know that world so it yeah as it turned out i went to another dior office and they had plenty of flowers and they were different colors i was like what is in a winter no so but uh i'm glad we got it right oh that's awesome and tell me about the italian shoe i guess having been to paris last time yeah milan was the natural port of yeah we just you know we wanted to um hit another great fashion center and there's obviously you know amazing history of fashion and industry and in milan and it was a city i didn't know much about you know i'd been there maybe 24 hours in my life uh and it was fantastic to get introduced and see you know the history and the beauty and so much of milan is hidden behind is in courtyards, you know, behind facades.

16:05And there's absolutely gorgeous art. And of course, you know, you have all these amazing Italian designers. And so we went to Fashion Week last year and went to shows and took the ride up, you know, it's only an hour up to Lake Como and you see these amazing palazzos everywhere. So we wanted to share that, you know, the beauty and the glamour of that world with the audience and understand this is really the world that these characters, you know, would be moving in. Miranda's hotel room is going to haunt my life. I feel like that was an extreme. You know, the crazy thing, you know, people are, it's a beautiful hotel, the Palazzo Parigi in Milan.

16:48Those rooms in the movie do not exist in real life. I just, big asterisk. Those were created by our production designer, Jess Gontschor, in a mansion in Long Island, New York. Oh, wow. Wow. Not quite the same vibe as Milan then. No. So one of the things I really liked about this as well is you've also dealt with the way that the work culture and language has changed over the last 20 years. You know, the sort of outright bullying that Miranda used to do, I think, would now be a little bit more difficult to get away with. And I love there were little kind of comic scenes sort of dealing with that.

17:27Was that something that was always in the script as well? Yeah, that was, you know, this idea of, you know, I mean, Miranda can't still throw her coat at people, you know, that's not going to pass muster. So she's got to learn to hang up her own coat. And, you know, she's went out of her way to hire an assistant, Amari, who played beautifully by Simone Ashley, who is her guardian, you know, just keeps her from stepping over the line too many times. And, you know, she's still capable of making a wrong move. But at least now she knows, you know, when she's trespassing. Yeah, I thought those scenes were absolutely great.

18:06So yeah, I mean, tell me about, you've worked with Meryl now several times. What is it about her that makes her as iconic as she is in this role? I mean, you tell me, I mean, it's just, she's, she's memorable every time out. You know, I honestly, I, I think it's her sense of humor. You know, I think, I mean, obviously she's also, I mean, Sophie's stories, I mean, incredible dramatic roles, but, um, she's, uh, she's a, you know, there's, there's, um, there's just a natural charisma and wit about her. And she's also so smart and she understands film acting, which is just, I mean, obviously now Annie and Emily Stanley have learned how to do that.

18:52But what Meryl understands is that movies are edited and that you don't need to be perfect in every take. And so she's always experimenting. She's never doing the same thing twice. And that way she's free. You know, she's not locked into a performance and it feels so alive every time. It's as if she's saying the words for the first time. And it's just a, yeah, really special quality. Yeah. Well, it makes for very special films. Did you expect the first one to have the kind of tale that it's had? I mean, there's still debates online about who is the villain really and why is it Andy's friends? You know, there's a musical version.

19:32We're back here 20 years later. Yeah. I mean, no. I had no expectation. of that. I never anticipated we'd be doing a sequel. The musical is amazing. Look, it's a testament to partly the curiosity that we all have about peeking behind the curtain at this world and the glamour of it and the risks of it and also the charisma of these movie stars. and you know it all starts with great writing you know Lauren Weisberger wrote a really interesting novel and Lingbrush McCann wrote a great screenplay and it's still we quote half the script seems to be like I'm a tote bag somewhere it's amazing to me I'll never not be surprised.

20:26Have you got any plans for Dev Wars Part 3 maybe less than 20 years? Plans? No if there is it will definitely be less than 20 years i kind of want to see like miranda versus gaga if i'm honest well if it's in 20 years they're going to be like wheelchair racing um but uh yeah i look let's hope that um we get to explore like you know where they go from here yeah and has the film changed your own relationship with kind of fashion like do you do you think about this stuff when you're getting dressed? Can you tell? I mean, you are very well dressed today, for those listening. Thanks to Dolce & Gabbana.

21:05But, you know, in my everyday life, I'm wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and I have amazing... I'm awestruck by designers, the work they do. I mean, you know, you think about Jonathan Anderson putting out, you know, eight collections a year for Dior, Or, you know, it boggles the mind that the creativity, you know, I got to meet at dinner a few weeks ago with Domenico Dolce and he's still, you know, in his 60s, he's still getting up at five in the morning and, you know, collecting tear sheets out of magazines and photos and inspirations and designing new collections and looking forward to the Altamoda in July.

21:49you know it's and and the and he's not just designing clothes he's designing you know coffee cups and toasters and you know uh it's um i i'm in awe of of that level of of creativity and uh it's also like a slippery slope and you know you know the minute you see something and you want one thing nice you need to go buy another nice thing and i'm terrified of that quite right me too obviously anyway thank you so much and best of luck with the film thank you so much all right that was david frankel talking to helen and the devil wears prada too is out in cinemas across the country nay the world from tomorrow a film that's not in cinemas but perhaps should have been it's been david grabinski's excellent time travel action comedy mike and nick and nick and alice starring james marsden asa gonzalez fince fawn and fince fawn as components of a love triangle so complicated that it actually has four points, which I guess makes it a love square.

22:55But there's nothing square. Oh my God, segue of the year is in the bag, folks. About Grabinski's movie, which is on Disney Plus and Hulu right now, and is a delight full of quirky comedy, great action sequences, interesting character work, and tons of twists. Oh, and there's a scene involving Oasis's Don't Look Back in Anger, which I did not have on my bingo card before watching the movie. I was so taken by the film, in fact, that I wanted to sit down with Grabinski and pick his brains about it, which I did for a Sporter Special interview that is up right now, folks, over on the Sporter Special feed.

23:31You're going to get a taste of that interview right now. Now, this is an interview that's focused more on the emotional beats of the movie rather than twisty, turny, timey-wimey plot stuff. But either way, you should only listen to this if you have seen Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice. If you haven't seen Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice, then perhaps best give it a swerve until you have seen Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice. For the rest of you, here it is, Chris and Ben David and Ben David and Chris. Enjoy. Ben David Grabinski, welcome to the Empire Podcast Spoiler Special for Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice.

24:09That's a fun title to say. Is that kind of part of how you came up with those character names? Well, yeah, I first wanted to do kind of a very slight homage to Mikey and Nikki, the Elaine May movie. And then when it was forming itself as kind of some very complicated marital situations, uh the bob and carol and ted and alice thing all kind of came together where like i had coincidentally named her alice and i think i had some epiphany when i was like oh well the characters are mike and nick and nick and alice so i can kind of do the mikey and nicky title and kind of do the bob and carol and ted now's title and you know as much as i enjoy someone watching this movie really cold uh i i did come across someone who watched it very cold and somehow had dialed in so much on the title that they were expecting it kind of to be a one-to-one tonally movie to Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.

25:09And I am sorry that my movie is much dumber than that. I was not working in the same sophisticated realms as that film was. Over here in the UK, I'm sure you know this. You're a film nerd like me. We have something called Rita Sue and Bob 2. Have you ever heard of that film? No. No? It's a sort of kitchen sink, love triangle thing from the early 1980s. Really good film. Check it out if you have. This is going into my watch list right now. It is nothing like your film, Ben David. Nothing like it whatsoever. But yeah, stick it on your watch list. Rita Sue and Bob 2. Well, as you'll probably realize, I love all kinds of movies.

25:52So I don't require any movie I watch to be just like my movie. And to be fair, not a lot of things are, in my opinion. This is very, very true indeed. So talk me through the process of writing this, because when you have a time machine and time travel at the heart of a film, I imagine that gives you a lot of freedom, but also it straightjackets you in a way as well. What were the biggest challenges in terms of story and plot that you had to overcome while writing it? Well, you know, the challenge was really just about keeping it more spare. Because I wanted to, my priority was to make a one night gone wrong movie more so than making a time machine movie.

26:38Like, I wanted to make a time machine movie where the machine blew up and anyone who can really get into the details of it is dead. because the time machine is just an excuse to create the emotional specificity of okay i get one last chance to be around my dickhead self and knowing everything i know about him and that night try to do a speed run on redemption you know um because like something that we don't usually get to do i mean the way i always say it is like back to the future only has time travel because of the question the emotional question which is what would it be like to hang out with my parents when they were my age in high school what were they like yeah and the time machine in this is just for the question what if i realized too late that i sucked and and ruin everyone's life around me and i got one chance and one night to hopefully fix that and that's it so it's like you're trying to do a one night wrong buddy action comedy about regret and grief and redemption and then the time machine gives them the opportunity and then it blows up.

27:53So we're... Hopefully by blowing it up, you're letting the audience know that this is not a movie where they're going to just keep redoing things. That like, if someone's getting in a fight, that fight matters. It's not like they're just going to do the fight a second time. You know, there's two different versions of this movie and the one... that you might maybe expect something that's more in like a Rick and Morty manic kind of energy is the just just constant doing things you know it's just like like we're gonna use again we're gonna use again we're gonna use it again it's like oh there's three guys no now there's four guys now there's five guys like I I wanted to take and sort of put my opportunities and choices into kind of a more digestible bag uh instead of making it feel like it is because it is insane an insane movie but you have to create some sort of guardrails for yourself or else it's just it could be a three-hour movie and just by the end of it there's 80 versions of each character and you know it's just madness and i didn't want to get that mad it's it's really interesting as well because you have vince and fince wildly different characterizations future nick is only six months older than present Nick, give or take a couple weeks, I guess.

29:15And yet he's undergone a lot of change, a lot of growth in that time. How did that dictate how Finn's attacked both of those characters and approached both those characters and how you directed them as both of those characters? Well, I think that it's like a very clear demarcation point. Like, you know, if you take Scrooge at the end of the story and Scrooge at the top of the story, Those are drastically different people, but for them, that's really like a span of eight hours, you know? I mean, it's like this very high stylized journey because someone's seeing their past, their future, learning the error of their ways.

29:57But on the same hand, when Mike died, Nick thought he knew himself. And when Mike died, he felt awful and realized that it didn't make him feel any better. And it made him realize he was a fucking shit. And then he finds out that Alice is pregnant and Mike isn't going to be around to raise this kid and his friend. He no longer has his friend around, even if they've gotten so fucked up and so estranged. He's just been living in regret for six months. And that's a lot of time to be living in regret and every day waking up, realizing what the fuck did I do? Like he did this thing very impulsively.

30:42It's like he found out about the affair and within 12 hours got all these things in motion that were going to lead to Mike's death. And he thought it would be satisfying and it wasn't. and you know in life there's a lot of times where people can make really bad mistakes and just by virtual reality itself you just either have to live with them or learn from them but you can't undo them so it's like this is gonna be a guy who's gonna be an aa for the rest of his life or some equivalent of it and just like you know just not just he's just a fucking mess And the movie is just like, well, what if you did get a chance to redo it?

31:24And the clarity that he has is just very lucid. You know, he's like, why the fuck did I kill this guy? I didn't even love Alice anymore. I'd been a really horrible husband. Maybe what he did is fucked up, but did I have to get him eaten by a cannibal? So when he's like living in that emotion, the way I always describe it is like, this is like the sequel to like the most dark nihilistic um you know crime ending like it's not as it would the ending of like the story without a time machine it's not like it's as bad as like the long good friday where it's just like how doomed they are but there's that thing at the end of mikey and nicky where you're just seeing this close up of peter falk i'm always wondering like what is he thinking does he think that oh fuck why did i just let spoiler alert he's like why did i let my friend die like you know my friend now is kind of a jerk but you know he's sitting there in that house you know slamming the door when the assassin comes to kill him and what is he going to think in six months you know what is he going to think in six minutes is is he gonna is he gonna be haunted by letting this happen or is he gonna move on yeah and i'm just wondering if he was haunted and if he wished that he had tried to fix things what would he do it's not it's not literally that yeah but it's just sort of kind of a it's just sort of a psychological exercise just thinking about these characters at the end of these nihilistic endings whether it's you know mikey nicky or chinatown or whatever yeah just what happens six months later if uh the world of the movie is a little dopey in a sense where you can be like, oh, yeah, we loan money to a guy and he built a time machine with it, so we're going to use that.