By Fred Topel | Image property of 20th Century Fox.
Stanley Tucci
Meryl Streep rules The Devil Wears Prada with her passive-aggressive boss tactics, but even she needs a lackey. Stanley Tucci plays Nigel, number two to Miranda Priestly (Streep) at Runway magazine. Miranda is a workaholic so Nigel must be by default, but in real life, Tucci avoids that sort of tunnelvision.
Stanley Tucci on The Devil Wears Prada
“It’s hard,” Tucci said. “I’ve gotten better at it over the years. I have three little kids. You just don’t ever want to miss their growing up so you just have to be careful not to overwork yourself so that you end up pulling away from them. I think also, your work is better if you step away from it from time to time.”
Miranda would say that her success shows her way of life is appropriate, but Tucci disagrees. “I think that they would still be able to do things as well as they’re doing them, but they think they wouldn’t.”
Nigel mentors young Andy (Anne Hathaway) who is in over her head at the magazine, with Miranda and in the fashion world in general. Like most youths, Andy and her friends complain about their demanding bosses, an attitude not unfamiliar to veteran Tucci.
“I think it really depends upon the person. I think one thing about maybe this generation is that people do expect to start on a higher level than maybe they did in previous generations. The idea of working one’s way up or taking the time to work one’s way up doesn’t seem to be in their minds as much as it used to be.”
With life moving at an ever faster pace, it is hard to imaging going back to those days. “Maybe someday it’ll go back to that. I don't know how it will but I think one of the culprits here is the way we receive information and the way we receive information, things are instantly gratifying. We expect every aspect of our life to be the same. We expect to have that thing that we want sooner rather than later and that’s not the way it works.”
Bad bosses are a fact of life. Not even Hollywood actors are immune. “I’ve had bad directors who think they’re the boss, but they forget that it’s a collaborative effort. I try to be diplomatic at first and if that doesn’t work, if they’re still rude or whatever they are, myopic or something, then I fight.”
Fortunately, Devil Wears Prada’s David Frankel was not one of those. “Somebody like David, who’s just a wonderful director, is very quiet but got exactly what he wanted from all of us.”
The Devil Wears Prada opens to theatres on June 30th.
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