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1. Who plays Miranda Priestly?
Meryl Streep
Streep chose to play Miranda quietly rather than loudly, borrowing the low voice partly from Clint Eastwood, and asked for the white hair herself. The part earned her an Oscar nomination, which she lost to Helen Mirren, among the distractors, for The Queen.
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2. Who plays Andy Sachs?
Anne Hathaway
Hathaway was not the studio's first choice; Rachel McAdams, among the distractors, turned the part down more than once. Andy arrives in a lumpy sweater and sensible skirt that the office treats as a provocation, and her transformation is the plot.
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3. What fashion magazine does Miranda run?
Runway
The model is Vogue: the novelist Lauren Weisberger had been Anna Wintour's assistant there, and Wintour turned up to the premiere in Prada. Mode, among the distractors, is the magazine in Ugly Betty, which reached television the same year.
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4. Who directed the film?
David Frankel
Frankel came from television, where he had directed episodes of Sex and the City, and brought along its costume designer, Patricia Field, whose borrowed and bought wardrobe swallowed a large slice of the budget. Aline Brosh McKenna wrote the script.
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5. Where did Andy go to college?
Northwestern
She edited the Daily Northwestern and tries to tell Miranda about it at the interview; Miranda would rather know why someone who does not read Runway is sitting in her office. The fashion job is meant to be a year's detour on the way to serious journalism.
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6. Who plays the senior assistant Emily?
Emily Blunt
Blunt was a near-unknown when cast, and the part made her career; the character is called Emily in the novel too. She lives on cubes of cheese to fit the sample sizes for the trip, then is hit by a taxi before she can go, which is how Andy takes her place.
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7. Where does Andy pick up the steak Miranda wants for lunch?
Smith & Wollensky
Andy fights through the rain to collect it, and Miranda has decided to eat out by the time she gets back, so it goes straight into the trash. Smith & Wollensky is a real Midtown steakhouse; Peter Luger, among the distractors, is the famous one in Brooklyn.
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8. What color is central to Miranda's speech about Andy's sweater?
Cerulean
Not turquoise and not lapis, Miranda explains, but cerulean, and she traces the lumpy sweater back to Oscar de la Renta's gowns and an Yves Saint Laurent collection of military jackets. The lecture answers Andy's smirk at two belts that look alike to her.
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9. What unpublished book does Miranda demand for her children?
The next Harry Potter book
Two copies of the unpublished manuscript, for the twins Caroline and Cassidy to read on the train, and failure means the end of Andy's job. She gets it through Christian Thompson, the writer played by Simon Baker, who knows someone at the publisher.
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10. What is the name of Andy's boyfriend?
Nate
Nate is played by Adrian Grenier, who was fronting Entourage at the time, and his birthday is the one Andy misses for a Runway benefit. Christian, among the distractors, is the writer she nearly falls for; Alex is what the boyfriend is called in the novel.
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11. What is Nate's profession?
Chef
His kitchen hours are nearly as unsociable as hers, which is part of why the relationship frays. It is Nate who tells Andy that the person whose calls she always takes is the relationship she is actually in, and he ends the film with a job offer in Boston.
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12. What city hosts the fashion trip Emily desperately wants?
Paris
Paris Fashion Week is the perk Emily has starved herself for, and Miranda hands it to Andy instead, telling her to decide whether she wants the life. The trip is where Miranda's divorce and Nigel's promised promotion come to a head, and where Andy walks away.
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13. What is Miranda's regular closing phrase?
That's all
Two words that end every exchange, usually delivered without looking up and before the other person has finished. Nigel, played by Stanley Tucci, is the one member of staff who seems unbothered by them, and he is the one who dresses Andy properly.
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14. What does Andy's father urge her to consider doing?
Quitting the job
He is in town for a visit, and their evening is interrupted by Miranda's demand that Andy get her home from Miami in a hurricane, with every flight grounded. He wonders aloud what happened to law school and journalism, and Andy insists the year will pay off.
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15. What does Andy throw into a fountain near the end?
Her work phone
Into a fountain in Paris, in the middle of a call from Miranda, right after Miranda has told her that everybody wants to be them. Her next interview is at a New York newspaper, where Miranda's grudging reference has arrived ahead of her.
