I'm a Millennial Who Used to Work in Magazines—Here's What ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ Got Eerily Right

Was someone trying to sabotage me…with a jar of paper clips? When I started my first job as an assistant in magazines, it was the only thing on my desk. An apple-sized glass jar full of rainbow paper clips.

So, when a top editor asked me to print documents and leave them on her desk, I hastily grabbed the first clip—baby blue—and popped it on the packet.

Then I was called back into her office.

“Going forward, can you only use silver paper clips? Perhaps black, maybe navy, but never anything like this?” she asked, holding up the packet. “It offends my visual sensibilities.”

My first, most basic task, and I’d already messed it up.

Welcome to the world of magazines, circa 2010: post-recession, pre-digital upheaval and still clinging to its old hierarchies. Even though I got my start a few years after The Devil Wears Prada’s 2003 debut—and subsequent 2006 blockbuster movie—it perfectly captured more than the tyranny of a challenging boss. It was the strange mix of absurdity and aspiration that defined entry-level life in magazines.

Now that it’s spawned a sequel, people have asked me (a former editor’s assistant), was it ever really like that?

Gather ‘round, young Gen Zs and Alphas, and let this elder millennial tell you: Yes, yes, it was.

Unlike Sex and the City and Girls, nobody moved to New York to chase their dreams because of The Devil Wears Prada. I, like Emily Blunt’s character, Emily Charlton, knew “a million girls would kill for this job,” and so, The Devil Wears Prada was cathartic, in the way that a Dilbert comic is for anyone at a corporate job.

That was the gift of The Devil Wears Prada: perspective, on two fronts. It forced me to see the value of the work and the cost of putting too much of yourself into it.

There was an absurdity to things, particularly the “world is ending!” drama that could unfold if, say, the flowers for a photo shoot were more peachy than cream. Nobody was going to die, but still, heads would roll.

That was the gift of The Devil Wears Prada: perspective, on two fronts. It forced me to see the value of the work and the cost of putting too much of yourself into it.

Just as I got into magazines because a 12-year-old me felt less awkward and alone reading Atoosa Rubenstein’s editors’ letters in CosmoGirl (I kept the first issue with Melissa Joan Hart on the cover until it literally fell apart), there were people finding inspiration in the pages of the interior design and lifestyle magazines I was working for.

That “wake up, sweetheart” speech Nigel gives Andy? It hit home. (“You are not trying, you’re whining,” he says, when she comes to his office to vent. “This place, where so many people would die to work, you only deign to work.”)

I didn’t have a passion for interiors, but I could learn to respect it. The trend-spotting and curation that gave each publication a distinct point of view, driving inspiration and making people feel seen, there was value in that. And on a personal level, in my travel organizing and coffee-fetching, I was learning negotiation skills and project management.

At the same time, I needed to set boundaries. Because “a million girls would kill for this job,” there was pressure to always be on, always respond, always make it happen—even if it meant missing brunch during your mother-in-law’s first trip to New York in years to track down your boss’s missing luggage one Sunday morning (which I dutifully did, then cried about, rather than push back). I had to learn to stand up for myself. After all, like Nigel said, I wouldn’t be getting a “gold star and a kiss on the forehead” either way (and it wouldn’t necessarily spare me from layoffs, especially as the industry condensed).

That’s what makes me so intrigued about the sequel, out May 1. Yes, I miss the characters, I want the humor—but I also have high expectations for its portrayal of how the industry has evolved in the two decades since the original came out. So many print magazines have folded; content creators and citizen journalists can wield as much influence as legacy media. In some ways, there’s been a necessary crumbling of the self-important seriousness and superfluous demands. Most assistants I know get opportunities to write and report earlier on, and while some may still do coffee runs, I don’t know of any who get sent out several times until the soy latte’s temperature is just right. Nobody has time for those egos anymore.