Real-Life Emily Who Inspired ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ Character Speaks Out

In the late 1990s, a bright-eyed Leslie Fremar—fresh off a promotion to Anna Wintour’s first assistant after just six months—found herself in a position to hire a deputy. A few years later, Fremar was reading an advance copy of The Devil Wears Prada…and realized she’d been written into its pages. “She’s me—I am Emily,” she tells Chloe on this week’s episode of The Run-Through with Vogue. “I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about it.” Now a stylist for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars—most notably Charlize Theron, a longtime collaborator—Fremar recalls how intimidating her early days at Vogue were. “There were rules passed down to me: I couldn’t eat at my desk. You couldn’t even go to the bathroom, because one of the assistants always had to be there,” she says. 00:00 - Introducing Leslie Fremar 00:39 - Opening up about The Devil Wears Prada 01:43 - Styling Charlize Theron 04:04 - Styling for a press tour 05:11 - Starting at Vogue 11:58 - Promoted to First Assistant 13:16 - First year of working with Anna 15:28 - The book 17:07 - The real Emily 17:45 - Learning about the book 22:28 - The real Andy Sachs 23:48 - Fact vs Fiction 26:22 - Did she travel to Paris? 29:30 - Dry cleaning 30:30 - Harry Potter transcript 30:16 - Office reaction to The Devil Wears Prada 32:10 - The movie adaptation 34:31 - Cerulean blue sweater 35:21 - Gawker article 36:30 - Complicated feelings 37:48 - Why talk about it now? 38:20 - Meeting Emily Blunt 40:08 - Crying i