The Devil Wears Prada Propelled Emily Blunt’s Career, But It Had The Opposite Effect For Stanley Tucci: ‘I Didn’t Understand That’
With talks about a Devil Wears Prada sequel amping up, some cast members have been reflecting on their experiences working on the 2006 film, and the impact that the fashion-forward classic had on their careers. One such cast member is Stanley Tucci, who ruminated on the fact that his career hasn’t been as busy as some of his other co-stars’, like Emily Blunt.
To this day, The Devil Wears Prada is considered one of the best movies from the 2000s. Following its release, many actors, like Emily Blunt, saw their careers take off too. However, other cast members, like Stanley Tucci, experienced the opposite effect. In an interview with Vanity Fair’s podcast Little Gold Men, the actor spoke about his new critically acclaimed film Conclave, while also opening up about his career and how The Devil Wears Prada, specifically, impacted it:
After The Devil Wears Prada, I couldn’t get a job, and I didn’t quite understand that, but that’s just the way it was. So I went and did stuff that I didn’t necessarily want to do, but I did it.
Tucci went on to speak about how there has been a lot of space between roles, especially after the pandemic. When asked if the space between projects was a deliberate choice, his response was simply: “No. People just didn’t want to hire me.” Along with that, he also attributed some of that gap to working on his series Tucci in Italy.
As the interview went on, spoke more about his experience in the entertainment industry and how he feels about it. He was quoted once stating “you don’t get tired of acting, you get tired of waiting.” When asked to go into more detail about that quote, Tucci explained:
Acting is fun. Waiting around to act is so not fun. You feel like you’re wasting your time. Obviously, there are things that are happening that need to happen to be ready for you to go and do your moment.
Hearing that Tucci has been left waiting for people to reach out to him is insane to me, considering he has many stellar roles like George Harvey in The Lovely Bones, as well as Nigel in The Devil Wears Prada. These two completely different characters prove that Tucci is a stellar character actor with a wide range.
That’s why it’s so hard to wrap my mind around the fact that the larger gaps between roles aren’t because he himself doesn’t want to work, it’s because he is going through long bouts of waiting for the next part to come around. He spoke more about this in the interview too, saying:
You never know what that time is going to be, so you can’t really commit yourself to anything, and you have to stay in this emotional and intellectual purgatory until they say, ‘Okay, we’re ready for you,’ and then you can go. So you’re saving your energy. You can’t really commit to anything except a crossword puzzle or Instagram.
It’s hard to imagine someone so talented just sitting on their hands. However, it does reaffirm that acting is a job at the end of the day; and unfortunately, some of the most qualified people just have to sit and wait for the work to come to them.
It sucks, and I don’t understand it in its entirety, however, that is how the cookie crumbles. The best we as audience members can do is support our favorite stars.
So, while we wait for more information about whether Tucci will be returning for a Devil Wears Prada sequel, you can catch his latest project on the 2024 movie schedule, Conclave, in theaters now. Plus, if you’d like to back and see his impeccable performance as Nigel in the classic that is The Devil Wears Prada, you can stream it with a Max subscription.
