Devil May Cry 1 Secrets

[Tripp Powell]

When a show opens with Cage the Elephant's "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked," you know it's going to be good. And FOX's new show Lucifer, based on the character originally created by Neil Gaiman in DC Comics' The Sandman, does not disappoint.

The main reason the show comes off as well as it does is that its protagonist/anti-hero is so well portrayed. His opening scene tells us everything we need to know about him as a character - he speeds down the highway not giving any f***s, gets pulled over, persuades the cop to tell his secrets and then take a bribe, and finally speeds away to his nightclub. I mean really...what did you expect from the devil?

Then there's the dialogue. There were so many excellent one-liners in the pilot alone (I've recapped some of them below, but there were more). The dialogue was fast-paced, sharp-tongued and utterly fantastic. Tom Ellis excels at portraying Lucifer Morningstar as sarcastic and witty.

Yet there's also an excellent range of emotion there. He's genuinely dumbfounded by detective Chloe Decker, who is immune to his charms. As the wonderful shrink Linda points out, it bothers him on a fundamental level that he can't affect her, and he's immensely intrigued by it - to the point of committing the very un-devilish act of saving her life.

There's also a lot going on behind the scenes here from an otherworldly point of view. Amenadiel the angel shows up to chide Lucifer back into hell, and it's clear that Lucifer feels he's been unfairly put upon to be the bad guy. All of which begs the question - what's actually happening in hell right now? There's a lot for them to explore from this angle, and I look forward to it.

The plot itself was fairly basic and rightfully overshadowed by the dialogue and Tom Ellis just snarking his way through the entire episode. If the show wants to get renewed (and I hope it does), it needs to step up its plot game a little. But that's the only complaint I've really got.

Perhaps what I liked most about the show was the way it evoked many different genres. The devils and angels bring both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural to mind, two shows I very much enjoy. The crime solving aspects brings to mind normal police shows like CSI and supernaturally oriented ones like Moonlight (sadly canceled a year or so before the great vampire craze) and Sleepy Hollow.

Because nearly two decades later, Tracie Thoms can still recall the terror she felt when Meryl Streep spoke those first intently hushed words at The Devil Wears Prada table read.

At first, Thoms explained to E! News in an exclusive interview, she thought the Oscar winner was simply getting through the material, still formulating how she wanted to play unapologetically demanding Runway editor Miranda Priestly, a not-all-that-loose interpretation of Vogue's Anna Wintour.

But, "maybe, a page-and-a-half in," Thoms said of the script, adapted from Lauren Weisberger's wildly popular novel of the same name, "I was like, 'Oh, no. That is the choice. Oh my god, this is the most genius thing I've ever seen in my life.' Because it made everybody at the table have to lean into her, to Miranda."

Streep later admitted to lifting the idea from Clint Eastwood. "He never, ever, ever raises his voice and everyone has to lean in to listen," she explained to Variety in 2016, "and he is automatically the most powerful person in the room."

"She didn't even look at Anne, except for when she talked about her sweater: 'And then you got that hideous sweater from a Casual Corner' or whatever," Thoms revealed. "And I could feel Anne next to me just, like, wilt in her soul."

Before they took their seats, Thoms shared, Streep "was very sweet. And then that started. I was like, 'That's a lot coming for you, Anne. Good luck to you!' I had no scenes with her, thank God. I would die."

"She was just happy to have somebody else around her that was nerdy like her," Thoms joked of future Les Misrables Oscar winner Hathaway. "It was, like, the easiest job I've ever done because sometimes we didn't even know if [director] David [Frankel] had called action. We were just making up things about French fries. And then Anne would walk in and we're like, 'Okay, I guess we're shooting now. Okay, great.'"

More than 18 years since the film trampled Superman Returns en route to a $326 million box office gross, Thoms' memories remain so fond that she gets sucked right back in every time the comedy appears on her television screen: "I'm like, 'Well, guess this is happening now. Again.'"

Make that movies, the recent news that Streep, Emily Blunt and other stars will be reprising their roles in an upcoming sequel making it pretty much impossible for us all to gird our loins.

To celebrate, we're reliving all the magic from the OG film with some behind-the-scenes secrets straight from the stars themselves. By all means, read at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills us.

1. The film version of The Devil Wears Prada was in the works before the book even hit shelves. The first 100 pages and an outline were enough to sell Fox executives on the roman--clef based on author Lauren Weisberger's brief stint at Vogue as editor-in-chief Anna Wintour's assistant. "I was the first person to read it at Fox 2000," the studio's former executive vice president Carla Hacken told Variety in 2016. "I thought Miranda Priestly was one of the greatest villains ever. I remember we aggressively went in and scooped it up."

2. The lore of Wintour created a lot of difficulties for production. "I had enormous trouble finding anyone in the fashion world who'd talk to me, because people were afraid of Anna and Vogue, not wanting to be blackballed," McKenna told Entertainment Weekly of her research. "There was one person who spoke to me, whose name I will never divulge, who read it and said, 'The people in this movie are too nice. No one in that world is too nice. They don't have to be, and they don't have time to be.' After that, I did a pass to make everyone a bit busier and meaner."

"Even these iconic apartment buildings we saw as possibilities for Miranda's apartment, the co-op boards wouldn't let us in," he shared. Eventually, they borrowed a five-story Upper East Side town house from a friend of producer Wendy Finerman.

3. But there was one set they nailed. "The only contact we had with Vogue was Jess Gonchor, the production designer, who snuck into their offices to get a look at Anna's office," Frankel revealed to EW. "He was able to re-create the office so authentically that I was told Anna redecorated hers immediately after the movie came out."

4. The wardrobe presented a unique challenge as well. Initially, Frankel told EW, they couldn't convince any notable designers to lend pieces for the film: "They just didn't want to incur the wrath of Anna."

Enter legendary costumer Patricia Field, who worked her magic, assembling a lineup of some 150 pieces from Donna Karan, Zac Posen, Rick Owens and, yes, Prada, taking care to differentiate Meryl Streep's exacting Miranda Priestly from Wintour. "She borrowed everything; we had to be very careful not to eat spaghetti at lunch," noted Streep, "because it'd go down the front and they couldn't return it!"

5. And Wintour has at least a slight sense of humor about the whole thing. Streep sat down with the Vogue head for the fashion bible's 125th anniversary issue, sharing her experience portraying Wintour's late friend Katherine Graham in 2017's The Post. Asked about the most challenging character she's ever played, Streep responded, "Oh! I should say..." trailing off as Wintour jumped in. "No, no!" she said with a laugh. "We're not going there, Meryl."

8. Before accepting the part, Streep made a very Miranda Priestly-like move. Despite having already collected two Oscars and another 11 nominations by that point, Streep hadn't quite mastered the art of asking for more pay. But this time, she spoke up.

"The offer was, to my mind slightly, if not insulting, not perhaps reflective of my actual value to the project," she explained to Variety. "There was my 'goodbye moment,' and then they doubled the offer. I was 55, and I had just learned, at a very late date, how to deal on my own behalf."

9. She had other demands as well. Cautious about turning Miranda into a caricature, Streep insisted on two scenes: What she called "the business of fashion," in which the trendsetter schooled Andy on her cerulean sweater, and "a scene where she is without her armor, the unpeeled scene in the hotel room."

The white hair was her creation as well, Streep turning up with her icy locks for a sit-down with the head of the studio. As director Frankel recalled to EW, "Meryl channeled Miranda in that meeting, and there was no conversation about the hair; they looked into Meryl's eyes and never said a word."

10. Anne Hathaway had to work harder for her part than assistant Andy toiled for Miranda. Okay, maybe not that hard, but as she put it during an appearance on RuPaul's Drag Race, "I was the ninth choice for Devil Wears Prada."

11. Fortunately for Hathaway, execs' first choice turned them down. Repeatedly. "We offered it to Rachel McAdams three times," director Frankel told EW of the actress, then filming Fox's The Family Stone. Coming off Mean Girls and The Notebook, McAdams said she didn't want to dive into another mainstream flick. Said Frankel, "The studio was determined to have her, and she was determined not to do it."

12. Casting the part of Emily was even more work. Frankel watched more than 100 woman audition for the role of Miranda's unforgiving lead assistant (among them: Tracie Thoms, who eventually came back and read for Andy's bestie Lily), but it was a casually dressed Emily Blunt that caught his eye.

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