Her novel, based on her real-life experience as Anna Wintour’s assistant, may have catapulted her to worldwide fame, but the author has since revealed she wishes she hadn't written it.
It was 1999 when Lauren bagged the job many young women dreamed of - assistant to Anna Wintour, then editor-in-chief of American Vogue. She turned her experience of working at one of the world's most well-known fashion magazines into a book, which was then made into a movie and is now the subject of a West End musical with the music written by Sir Elton John. But the backlash she received when her book Devil Wears Prada was first published in 2003 still haunts her to this day.
In an interview with The Guardian, Weisberger says the reaction “left me traumatised. Powerful women, journalists who I respect to this day, were offended by it. They felt I had not paid my dues, that I was whining and complaining about having to get to work early and get coffees. The response was essentially: Who does she think she is?"
She says that although her first novel was a bestseller, selling more than one million copies, if she had known how it would be received then, she wouldn't have written it. "All this noise did wonderful things for book sales, but had I known what would happen, I would not have written the book," she explains.
"I had not understood that Anna would ever know or care about the book, or that anyone in the media would be remotely interested. Of course, from where I am now, I know the book has allowed me to do what I love more than anything, which is to spend my career writing. But at the time, if I had had the chance to take it all back, I would have like a shot.”
While the book caused a huge scandal in media circles, Anna Wintour never personally commented on it and Lauren has not heard from her since she stopped being her assistant. “I don’t think I’m even a blip on her radar,” she adds. “But who knows. She’s an enigma.”
Thankfully, times have changed in the last 25 years, but Lauren still remembers her mum telling her to hand in her notice after hearing how she was being treated. “But my father would say, ‘This is an incredible opportunity, a bird’s eye view no one your age gets.’ I wish now that I’d had the emotional fortitude to have more perspective, because I could have learned a lot more.
"Because, aside from all the noise about Anna, she is remarkable, the very best at what she does. And I didn’t fully appreciate that then. But if I had done, I don’t know that I would have been able to poke fun at it. And then none of this would have happened.”
The Devil Wears Prada is at the Dominion Theatre, London, from 1 December until 31 May
English (US) ·