Meryl Streep Talks The Devil Wears Prada 2, Recruiting Lady Gaga, and Life as a Grandma

Our first guest tonight might very well be the greatest actor of all time. And I'll I'll fight you if she if you say she ain't. She is back as Miranda Priestley in The Devil Wears Prada 2. It opens in theaters tomorrow. Please welcome Meryill Street. You must get this all. You must get this every time you go out, huh? Every time I come home. How are you doing? Everything all right? Everything all right. How are you? Good. I'm good, thank you. I'm, you know, I'm holding up. Yeah, you are. You're a prince. You are a night templar. You are.

No, please. Thank you. You're carrying the banner of freedom of the press. I'm just trying to do some jokes and uh we all depend on you. Well, thank you for saying the world is listening. I've just come around the world. Well, you're very kind to say that. I'm I'm honored particularly to hear that from you because uh I mean honestly, do you get embarrassed when people must gush over you all the time? I would imagine. Everywhere you go, you probably know I don't think they know me. Is that true? Um no. I mean, yeah. What don't we know about you? You're uncomfortable praise. don't like getting dressed up.

You don't? Okay. A I just had a big fight with my stylist. You did? Because they wanted me to wear ostrich feathers and I just thought it's Jimmy. I just want to, you know, you know what? I don't think you needed the And by the way, the ostrich now is running around naked, so you got to think about that. I know for nothing. You were out on Hollywood Boulevard today, which I wouldn't I would not recommend. Yeah. Uh, you were honoring two of your very close friends, Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt. Yes. Who were getting their stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame co-stars in this. And I think we have a photograph here.

It's about on the left we've got Dwayne the Rock Johnson. We got Robert Downey Jr. We got Stanley Tucci. We have Emily Blunt. We have Merryill Streep and other. And yeah, what was he doing there? Well, was he just out there and he walked into the shot? He just wanted to be there, you know. Yeah. It's sad, isn't it? They have given him a star. They did. Very far away. Oh, not in Hollywood. It wasn't adjacent to It's in Eagle Rock, right? The star. No, I think it's probably even further. Good. Um, but yeah, he was there to um pay tribute to Emily and so was The Rock and so was Robert Downey Jr. and I was there to pay tribute to Stanley. But

then Matt Damon paid tribute to him, too. Oh. Un unannounced, unasked for. I mean, he's always And then he wanted to come with me tonight. He did. Yeah. He gave a speech. He gave a very nice speech about Stanley. But you referred to yourself as a whiner in that speech, which I find hard to believe. No, I referred to myself as the world's greatest winer. I guess that's better than being But that's what Stanley and I bond on that because we both complain because basically we have nothing to complain

about really. Really, let's face it. But we do enjoy, you know, bitching about things, you know, everything. Doesn't everybody like to do that? I mean, it is fun. It's not hard. My wife sometimes says to me like, "We should not be, you know, complaining about things in front of the kids." And then I go, "Yeah, yeah, you're right." And I go, "Yeah, but it's so much fun." It is so much fun. How are they going to learn to complain about everything that happens to them? Exactly. What do you have more of now? Um, Oscars or grandchildren?

Oh, definitely grandchildren. How many for? I have six. And what are their ages? Um, 7 44 3 2 and 1. No, no. 744 331. That's the all fun ages, right? 7544 331. Dial that number. It's changing. I keep having birthdays. I think you just accidentally gave out your social security number. It could be. But see, uh, last summer it was great because they were 65 4 3 2 1 and then now they have a lot of birthdays.

They have to just kind of stay in line to make it easier. What do they call you? They call me Mimi. Okay. Did you tell them to call you Mimi or did the first one come up with that? The first one came up with it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm waiting for my granddaughter is uh is almost about to turn one, but I'm waiting uh to find out what my name is gonna be. And well, you probably would have heard it by now. Well, she's not speaking yet, so yeah. I mean, she says, you know, the kind of things, but not really. Not enough. Yeah, maybe mine will be eh.

Um, are you a cool grandma? I don't know. I'm a h I think I'm a little like Miranda Priestley as a grandma. Really? Because I like the rules, dear. I you know rules. Have you fired any of the children? No, but you know they're Do these kids get to hear you read to them? Do you read to them? Sure. Oh wow. They have no idea how good they have it. Yeah. Let's yesterday BJ Novak uh sent over so he's in the Devil War product and he also wrote a children's book. That's my kid's favorite book. Yeah.

It's and he just sent it over and they we I was really mad at him because we had to read it nine times in a row. So the book with no pictures. The book with no pictures. And it is so good. It's a great book. It's also torture for any adult who has to read it. It requires a lot. But oh boy, I big acting. He would love to hear you read that. So, you really put Do you Oh, yeah. You Oh, you do? Maybe I'll do the audio book or something.

Yeah, I think it came out a while ago, but I'm sure they would redo it for you. We do. Uh, have you done Harry Potter? Have you read that to the kids? Oh, sure. Yeah, I read that to Louisa, who's now 34. But I the whole thing not recently. I read it when she was, you know, in like the third grade or something. We're halfway through it with my kids. Yeah. They like it. I um enjoy reading it. Uh do you do the characters when you read? Of course you do that. I heard you do the characters.

I No, I do one I only do Hagrid. That is the only character that I do. and sometimes I accidentally do Hagrid when it's other characters speaking. I'm not you. Let's put it that way. I like that you do all of the characters. I'm just trying to Yes. Imagine Snape as you know going that's more like Hagrid. I do Hagrid. Yo. Yeah, it's a good hagrid. It's better than my Hagrid. Do you pick up when people are you're speaking to people and they have an interesting way of talking or an accent or something like that? Do you tuck it away?

Yeah. My kids have made fun of me over the years because back in the days when, you know, you could talk to an operator on the phone for some reason, you're calling somewhere. I would I if somebody had an accent, I would start to speak like them, like this, you know, a little bit weird. Yeah. They And they didn't like it. No. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if the peop Yeah. Probably the people didn't like it, but the kids didn't. I bet the people didn't notice and the kids didn't like it. There's something about your mom answering the phone that is bothersome for whatever reason.

I don't know what it is, but it's like all of a sudden she's friendly and you're like, "Who is this?" That's really true. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because Yeah. Usually I'm kind of stop it. You know what are you doing? Well, we're going to take a break and see a clip from the new movie The Devil Wears Prada 2. Meil Street is here with us. We'll be right back. Was dull and listless. I wouldn't say that was um the goal when the models were encouraged to mill around like starving goats in the parking lot of a methodone clinic in New Jersey.

What? Can't say what am I not allowed to say? Methadone, New Jersey. Anyway, this was our first time using this photographer. So, we can do a re-shoot. Just, you know, fix it. That is Merryill Street and The Devil Wears Potter. It opens in theaters tomorrow. Do you get the sense? You've been in a lot of movies. Do you sense how much excitement there is for this one? Wow. I Yeah, I h I was not aware. No, I'm not on No, I'm not on Instagram or Tik Tok or any anything really. All I do is read the news, you know.

How do you know if the president attacks you if you're Well, that I know. Paying attention to social med. Yeah. No, but so I wasn't aware, but when we started the press tour, I've just really come around the world uh and we went to Mexico City, New York, Tokyo, Soul, Shanghai, back to New York, London, back here, and this is it. We're done. Yeah. This is it. And everywhere we went, it was just like this anticipation, affection. I mean appetite for this movie which I wasn't aware of. I mean I knew it was a popular movie 20 years ago, right? But I had no idea that there was this

sort of big feel for it. There is people Well, people love the first movie so much and it's not just the first time but over and over again. Yeah. People watch it and then there's a lot of pressure to deliver, you know, to make sure this one's is good, right? Yes. Yeah, there it is. This is Yeah, I'm sorry to bring it up, but I'm glad we didn't It didn't happen at the beginning of your press tour. The um I heard you recruited Lady Gaga to be in the show.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that turned out well. Did somebody ask you to call her and ask her to be in the movie? Well, they wanted there was a it was written that there would be a pop star that would sing live at a on the runway in Milan. we were going to have this big um big show there and I thought, well, why don't I get Gaga cuz she's so great and she loves fashion and I had her number. You gave her a ring. I gave her a ring. And I love this girl. I love her so much. She is so game. She just said, "Yeah." I said, "Well, I haven't asked you what I'm gonna ask you." She said, "Yeah, anything. What do you want?"

"Does anybody ever reject you? Does this ever happen to you besides obviously your kids?" Uh, it has happened. Yes. Yeah. But no, this was a big get for us. We were really thrilled cuz she's spectacular. She's written three songs for us and she's a great actor, too. She's perfor she's great act great actress. a little too good in the scene I had with her, but um she was fantastic and I just got to watch her um you know, she was on a world tour. I think it was a year-long world tour and she just came in, flew in just on the day and set up and did this numerous times. You'll see it's a big set that where she sings and uh she did it differently every time. Elaborate costume. She kept

throwing out the dresses saying, "I don't like this." You know, and um she finally found the thing that worked and you could see it work. You could see it work in the No, no. She wore a pinstripe and she had, you know, she just tore us up. Have you thought about running for president? Because you would be a good president. You think you would Everybody would like you. You could talk to leaders of other countries and imitate them back to themselves. Oh god. You know, you're making my glasses fog up. That's okay. It's great to see you. We look forward to the film. It's called The Devil Wears Prada 2. It opens in theaters tomorrow. Merryill Street.

Everybody, we'll be back with Des.