Vanessa Williams revisits “Ugly Betty”, joins “Devil Wears Prada” musical as Miranda Priestly
Williams will portray yet another menacing magazine editor as she joins Elton John's stage adaptation of the beloved 2006 movie starring Meryl Streep.
Vanessa Williams has maximized the joint slay of two ruthless magazine editors as she joins Elton John's The Devil Wears Prada stage musical in the role of Miranda Priestly — 18 years after popularizing a similarly nefarious editorial queen, Wilhelmina Slater, at the center of ABC's beloved comedy series Ugly Betty.
The production announced Monday that the Tony Award-nominated performer will star as Priestly in the West End edition of the show, which features a score by John.
"Yes…it’s me," Williams wrote on Instagram, announcing the news with a video of herself stomping through the fictional Runway magazine hallway — while carrying "The Book" — before taking a seat at Priestly's desk. "Don't just sit there. Buy tickets or something," Williams says in the clip, before leafing through the file.
Williams takes over the role from Meryl Streep, who first fronted director David Frankel's 2006 blockbuster comedy upon which the stage musical is based. The film, which is also based on writer Lauren Weisberger's novel reportedly inspired by her tenure as an employee of Vogue editor Anna Wintour, followed an aspiring journalist, Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway), who reluctantly took a job with Runway magazine as Priestly's assistant — and, in hilarious fashion, clashed with the publication's stylish aesthetic as well as Priestly's menacing leadership style.
Williams boards the show after receiving glowing reviews for her work on Ugly Betty as Slater, the cutthroat head of the fictional Mode magazine — a character that ultimately brought Williams three Emmy nominations for her performance that aired between 2006 and 2010.
The 60-year-old — who also notched several successful singles on the American charts, including 1992's No. 1 smash "Save the Best for Last" — earned her a Tony nomination for her work in Into The Woods, atop other stage credits ranging from Kiss of the Spider Woman, Sondheim on Sondheim, and Show Boat to Anyone Can Whistle.
During EW's special 15-year anniversary oral history reunion with the cast and crew of Frankel's film in 2021, the director speculated on the story's future, and revealed that a sequel to the Oscar-nominated movie was initially discussed after the film grossed $326 million at the global box office.
"[The studio] didn't ask for [a sequel]. We had a meeting where we said, 'What could we do if there was a sequel?' Maybe it was stupid; we felt like, no, this story has been told," Frankel told us at the time. "Lauren eventually wrote another book following up 15 years later. We came to the same conclusion, that just following the characters wouldn't be the same."
The Devil Wears Prada stage musical debuts in October 2024 at London's Dominion Theatre.
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