Emily Blunt’s friendly feud with a Hollywood icon: “We always have beef with each other”
Emily Blunt isn’t an actor you would imagine who goes around stoking up dramas with many people. She’s known for playing supportive wives, magical flying nannies, and, more importantly, has to uphold that image, so her claws don’t likely come out very often. But when it comes to one particular role and the co-star within it, there’s a very different story, because the onscreen tension inevitably has to reach a boiling point.
This is only said slightly tongue-in-cheek, but there could be valid space for vicious rumours of animosity between Blunt and Meryl Streep to swirl, given the movie history they have behind them. Having starred in three separate films together, each one in which they both play characters on opposing sides of a fight, it seems the two Hollywood leading ladies have always had it out for each other’s necks, and the performance isn’t getting put to bed anytime soon.
In a recent red carpet interview, Blunt jokingly confronted these rumours, exclaiming: “God, why are Meryl and I so mean to each other in every movie we do? We always have beef with each other. I don’t know what it is. Let’s hope we remedy it. I’m not sure.” Indeed, with a trio of shared blockbusters under their belts, and a fourth in the pipeline, it seems the saga of drama isn’t set to go anywhere, but if history is anything to go by, it certainly will be entertaining viewing.
With the pair having played the classic fairytale trope opposite one another as the Witch and the Baker’s Wife in 2014’s Into the Woods, a fantasy blueprint was set for the pair’s onscreen rivalry, which they then continued to perpetuate four years later when Blunt graced the big screen as Mary Poppins, and Streep as her oddball cousin, yes, really, in 2018’s Mary Poppins Returns.
But beef ultimately doesn’t hold much weight in the fantasy land of Disney films, where everything is eventually neatly tied up with a bow and a sprinkle of pixie dust. What really is a true test of character is the cutthroat fashion boardrooms of ‘The Big Apple’. Though it has been almost two decades since they first came face to face in this setting, both actors will very shortly be heading back into that very same lion’s den.
Of course, it goes without saying that Blunt and Streep’s most prolific Hollywood fight came in the form of the 2000s classic The Devil Wears Prada, in which the latter plays the inimitable fashionista Miranda Priestly and the former her irritable assistant Emily Charlton. The film has become its own cultural behemoth over the years, but perhaps what no one could have expected was that almost 20 years down the line, the magazine’s biggest rivals would have to come together once again.
As the long-anticipated The Devil Wears Prada 2 gears into life for filming this month, with the release slated for next year, it remains to be seen whether the healer of time will have worked its magic on the fashion boss and her junior, or if they will be as sour as ever towards one another. Certainly, if their films of the interim years are anything to go by, it’s not set to be an easy ride.
