I love The Devil Wears Prada movies. I recently watched the second one, and somewhere between the fashion, the familiar characters, and Miranda Priestly still being unmistakably Miranda Priestly, I couldn’t help looking at the story through a leadership lens.
What stood out to me was not that Miranda had suddenly become a better leader. As part of her charm, She is still demanding, difficult, and used to operating from a position of authority. What has changed is her awareness. She seems more conscious of what it took to get where she is, the people who helped her stay there, and the fact that even an iconic leader cannot assume the organization around her will remain successful simply because it always has been.
That is where the movie became interesting to me from a leadership perspective. Between my MBA and my day job, I’ve realized that I tend to see the same themes everywhere—leadership, talent, risk, and how organizations respond when things do not go according to plan.
Resilience Is More Than Surviving the Crisis
Runway still has the name, the influence, and Miranda. From the outside, it looks strong. But the business around it is changing, which exposes a familiar organizational risk: past success can hide future weakness.
Organizational resilience is not simply the ability to recover after something goes wrong. It also involves anticipating change, responding effectively, and adapting as conditions evolve (Duchek, 2020). Leaders cannot predict every disruption, but they can build enough capability, relationships, and flexibility so the organization still has options when circumstances change.
Identify Your Best People Before It Is Too Late
Nigel’s story may be the clearest example of this. For years, he has been one of the people who quietly makes Runway work. He knows the business, understands Miranda, recognizes talent, and carries years of institutional knowledge. Yet Miranda repeatedly relies on that capability without giving him the opportunities his contribution deserves.
The sequel adds another layer by revealing Nigel’s role in bringing Andy back. He recognized what Runway needed and knew Andy could provide it. That to me is evidence of leadership without the title.
It is also a reminder that strong talent can become easy to overlook precisely because they are so dependable. Organizations build resilience through the knowledge, relationships, and capabilities of their people (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011). Leaders should recognize those people before their value becomes obvious only after they leave.
There Is a Cost to Leadership
One of Miranda’s more interesting reflections in the sequel is her acknowledgment that operating at her level comes with a cost.
What makes that work is that she does not reject ambition. She still loves the work and believes in what she has built. She simply seems more aware that success and sacrifice can exist at the same time. Lauren Weisberger has described this underlying question as part of the story: whether this is the life someone wants and what it will cost to get there (Schumer, 2026).
That cost is not limited to the leader. Nigel’s career, her assistants, and her family all absorb some of the consequences of the way Miranda chooses to operate. Leadership therefore requires more than deciding what you are personally willing to sacrifice. It also requires awareness of what your ambition asks from everyone around you.
What I Took Away
I did not leave The Devil Wears Prada 2 thinking Miranda Priestly had suddenly become a model leader. What made the movie more interesting was seeing her become more aware of the limits of the leadership model that made her successful.
Resilient leadership is not about becoming indispensable. It is about building an organization that can continue to perform without depending too heavily on one leader or a small group of people. That means recognizing strong talent before they become frustrated or leave, giving people room to grow, sharing knowledge, and preparing for change before circumstances force the issue. It also means recognizing that the cost of leadership is rarely carried by the leader alone.
Miranda’s growth is not that she becomes softer. She begins to see more clearly what her success required, who helped make it possible, and where the same approach may no longer be enough for what comes next.
Leaders should build people, create depth in their teams, and prepare their organizations to adapt when circumstances change. Strong leadership is not just about what gets delivered today, but whether the organization and its people are better prepared for what comes next.
References
Duchek, S. (2020). Organizational resilience: A capability-based conceptualization. Business Research, 13(1), 215–246. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40685-019-0085-7
Lengnick-Hall, C. A., Beck, T. E., & Lengnick-Hall, M. L. (2011). Developing a capacity for organizational resilience through strategic human resource management. Human Resource Management Review, 21(3), 243–255. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2010.07.001
Schumer, L. (2026, April 29). The Devil Wears Prada author Lauren Weisberger looks back as The Devil Wears Prada 2 hits screens (Exclusive). People. https://people.com/the-devil-wears-prada-author-lauren-weisberger-watching-the-devil-wears-prada-2-exclusive-11961403