She said “a million girls would kill for this job” — and she meant it.
Celebrity stylist Leslie Fremar has confirmed she was the real-life inspiration for Emily Charlton, the sharp-tongued first assistant to Miranda Priestly, played by Emily Blunt in “The Devil Wears Prada.”
The stylist has since built a high-profile career, working with clients including Charlize Theron and Julianne Moore. In 2022, she worked with Nicola Peltz on procuring the Valentino wedding gown that’s since turned into a public debacle.
After years of speculation, Fremar said the sequel’s rollout felt like the right moment to speak up. “Everyone really enjoyed the movie. Anna [Wintour]’s clearly embracing it,” Fremar said on Vogue’s “The Run-Through” podcast. “And so why not? Just put it out there.”
Fremar, a Toronto native, joined Vogue as Wintour’s second assistant in 1999 and soon rose to the first assistant role. She hired a young Cornell graduate named Lauren Weisberger to fill the junior seat — and the two shared a desk for eight months.
Weisberger went on to write the 2003 book based on her time in Wintour’s office.
“I definitely told her a million girls would kill for the job,” Fremar told host Chloe Malle. “That was definitely my line, because I actually really believed that, and I knew that she didn’t necessarily want to be there.”
She described Weisberger (the real-life Andy Sachs) as disengaged and uninterested in fashion, often treating the work as beneath her.
“I probably was not very nice, and I probably was high-strung because I felt like I was having to do her job as well,” the stylist recalled.
Fremar didn’t learn about the novel until after she’d left Wintour’s office. She was working at Prada, of all places, when her former boss handed her an early manuscript.
“It was actually quite mean, the galley,” Fremar said. “I think what got put into the world is a much lighter, nicer version of what she actually wrote.”
Reading it “felt like a betrayal.” The two haven’t spoken since Weisberger left Vogue.
“I think it would be very awkward,” Fremar said of the prospect of a reunion. “I don’t hold a grudge towards her, but… there’s nothing to be said.”
Fremar also debunked a few of the story’s most beloved plot points. The Paris trip? “Anna did not travel with her assistants. That is fiction.” Weisberger’s character’s transformation into a fashion darling? “I did not witness that.”
Despite the complicated legacy of the character based on her, Fremar credits Wintour with shaping her career. “Anna is my mentor, through and through,” she said. “I learned everything that I know from Anna.”
The sequel’s release has stirred up all the old memories. “Having a movie come out 20 years later, and then all of a sudden it’s back,” Fremar said. “Obviously I’ve moved past it all… but now it feels like yesterday, somehow.”
Vogue noted that Weisberger was contacted for comment and did not respond — though she did pen a piece for the mag about her life now.
“It wasn’t an attempt to take anyone down or exact some sort of revenge,” Weisberger asserts.
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