Audiences have definitely been "girding their loins" ever since it was announced there was to be a sequel to The Devil Wears Prada, with Meryl Streep returning to her Academy Award-nominated role of imperious fashion editor Miranda Priestly, and Anne Hathaway returning as her former assistant, Andrea "Andy" Sachs.
Their excitement only grew when the trailer for the film was dropped, with Streep's iconic silver bob and spine-chilling lip-purse back in place.
While the first Devil Wears Prada saw Miranda and Andy accompany one another on an unforgettable trip to Paris, this time the duo will travel to Milan, with scenes of the film actually shot on location during Milan fashion week.
As Streep told Harper's Bazaar for a profile on co-star Hathaway, the runway models the Oscar-winning costars saw while in Milan caught them both somewhat off-guard.
Streep said she was "struck by how not only beautiful and young—everyone seems young to me—but alarmingly thin the models were," and that Hathaway "clocked it too."
Indeed, Hathaway was so struck by the sizes of the models that she felt some changes were needed regarding the film's casting:
"She made a beeline to the producers about it, securing promises that the models in the show that we were putting together for our film would not be so skeletal!"
While Streep found her co-star to be a "stand-up girl" for her actions, users on X (formerly Twitter) were somewhat more divided.
Many agreed that Hathaway was, indeed, a "stand-up girl" and that her actions were an important step toward improving the eternal problem of body shaming in the fashion industry, as well as Hollywood:
Others, however, were more conflicted, pointing out how this is ultimately an unrealistic depiction of the fashion industry, with some even questioning if excluding models for being too thin was hypocritical:
One can't help but wonder if this move by Hathaway was a direct response to some of the frequent body sensitivity and body shaming scenarios found in the first Devil Wears Prada film.
The first film saw Hathaway's character Andy frequently the target of fat and/or body-shaming jokes, with Miranda even referring to her as the "smart fat girl," and the naturally svelte Hathaway even wearing "butt pads" in some of the film's earlier scenes.
Similarly, Emily Blunt as Miranda's senior assistant, Emily, a role the Oscar nominee will also be reprising for the sequel, deliberately starved herself for a portion of the film in order to maintain a perfect figure ahead of her planned trip to Paris.
Sadly, there are very few former or working models who haven't felt the pressure to maintain "skeletal" figures in order to remain relevant in this industry.
Perhaps this campaign of sorts by Hathaway and Streep might lead to the first step towards improving this rather horrifying reality?
We'll just have to wait and see after May 1, when The Devil Wears Prada 2 is released.
@RandyRRQuaid/X
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
