“Oh, fuck”: Simon Baker’s staunch refusal to watch the biggest movie of his career
Simon Baker is an interesting international television star who was able to briefly have a prominent role in American films.
As with many of his fellow Australian actors, Baker had first started appearing on soap operas before he began landing more significant roles in American productions, including future classics like LA Confidential and Margin Call.
None of Baker’s work could have prepared him for the phenomenon that was The Devil Wears Prada, an adaptation of a bestseller that ended up becoming one of the most successful films of 2006 and an instant favourite among female audiences. While Hollywood had been avidly producing more comedies due to the success of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, The Devil Wears Prada was proof that studios were best-suited to appeasing female audiences.
Baker has only a brief role as Christian Thompson, a writer who goes on a date with Anne Hathaway’s Andy, and although the pair seem to have genuine chemistry, the scene goes a different direction when the latter realises that the French Runway editor-in-chief Jacqueline, played by Stéphanie Szostak, is being brought in to potentially replace Streep’s character, Miranda.
While being in a fun scene in an Oscar-nominated film should have been a positive career experience, Baker revealed that he has yet to rewatch The Devil Wears Prada because of a comment made by a colleague’s wife. “She said, ‘What the fuck is going on with your eyebrows in that movie?’” he recalled, “I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And she goes, ‘They just had like their own fucking thing going on’, and I was like, ‘Oh, fuck, I don’t ever wanna see that movie’.”
Although Baker may have managed to laugh off his experience, The Devil Wears Prada was a significant film for nearly everyone involved, even Streep, who was already accepted as one of the greatest actresses of all time, proving that she could once again be a box office juggernaut, as she would follow the film up with more successful comedies like Julie & Julia, It’s Complicated, and Mamma Mia!
Emily Blunt had had her breakout role, and this put her immediately in high demand, while Hathaway proved to be more than the teenage star she was often mistaken for, and sure, the film was mostly centred around its female stars, but it also boosted the popularity of male actors like Stanley Tucci and Adrian Grenier.
Baker didn’t continue to make American comedies because he landed the perfect gig as the lead character on the crime series The Mentalist, which ran for seven seasons on CBS. Although he had previously earned praise for his work on E Street and The Guardian, getting to be on a reliable show for nearly a decade is as solid a job as any actor could ask for.
The current question is whether or not he will appear in The Devil Wears Prada 2, as none of the trailers thus far have revealed his appearance, and while the sequel is set to include new cast members like Kenneth Branagh, Justin Theroux, Sydney Sweeney, and BJ Novak, it wouldn’t be shocking if Baker popped in for a quick cameo.
