How To Fail With Elizabeth Day
Aline Brosh McKenna - The Rom Com Queen Who Wrote The Devil Wears Prada
06 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What inspired Aline Brosh McKenna to write 27 Dresses?
It doesn't take a genius to figure this out. The minute we cast Meryl, I thought, oh, this could be awesome. At the end of the class, he said, I've never said this to anyone in seven years, but you need to move to L.A.
Chapter 2: How did Aline learn to avoid 'smallifying' herself?
and be a screenwriter. This is what you were meant to do. Here's when I knew it was not going to work. We shot it and the executive comes up to me and she goes, you know, whatever happens with this, this thing is a real feather in your cap.
Chapter 3: What is Aline's process for writing bold characters?
And I thought, oh, we're doomed.
welcome to how to fail the podcast that believes that sometimes the message is in the mess before we get into this conversation please do remember to like subscribe and follow so that you never miss a single episode
In 1987, a newborn baby is abandoned in a remote spot. Nobody goes down that lane.
Chapter 4: What can we expect from The Devil Wears Prada 2?
Why would you think anyone would pick me up from there?
Chapter 5: What were Aline's experiences with 'failed' acting dreams?
For decades, Jess has searched for answers. Why didn't that person want me? But as she gets closer to the truth, things spiral out of her control. I think I'll always be angry. Could it have ended differently?
Chapter 6: How does Aline describe working with great actors?
From Tortoise Investigates and The Observer, this is Foundling. Lies always come out, don't they? Skeletons are always going to come out eventually. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. My guest today is a shaper of modern culture.
The chances are you'll be able to quote a line of her dialogue or recognize yourself in one of her characters, or you'll be able to recall almost word for word one of her iconic scenes.
Chapter 7: What makes Meryl Streep's big speech iconic?
Perhaps it's Meryl Streep's impassioned monologue on the power of cerulean in The Devil Wears Prada. It might be Katherine Hagel singing drunkenly to Elton John in 27 Dresses. Or it's Stanley Tucci uttering the immortal line, "'Gird your loins.'"
Whatever your entry point to the work of writer, director, showrunner and producer Aline Brosh McKenna, the chances are it lives in your head rent-free." She was born in France, where her mother had survived the Nazi occupation. The family moved to New Jersey when she was still a baby, and later, Brosch McKenna studied literature at Harvard.
After working as a freelance magazine writer in New York City, she took a six-week screenwriting course and moved to L.A., where she sold her first film script by the age of 26. But it was at 38 that her life changed with the 2006 release of global smash hit The Devil Wears Prada, which earned her a BAFTA nomination for Best Screenplay.
Further hit movies followed, including Morning Glory and I Don't Know How She Does It, before she co-created and show ran the musical comedy drama Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Now, to the frenzied excitement of so many of us, she's returning with The Devil Wears Prada 2. Baroche McKenna's work is funny, heartfelt and endlessly rewatchable.
Yet there's a deeper message too, a spotlighting of powerful women who might be misunderstood by others, but who come to understand the important balance between selfhood and connection, between work and love, in whatever form that love takes. Being funny, Brosh McKenna has said, means you're honest, almost to the point of transgression. You're saying the thing that isn't supposed to be said.
Aline Roche-McCannell, welcome to How to Fail.
Thank you. Everybody always like quells after your introductions and I feel all tingly.
Oh, well, it is such an honor to meet you.
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Chapter 8: What advice does Aline have for women in creative fields?
Thank you. Thank you for all of the work that you put out into the world. It really has meant so much to so many of us. And I know we're going to talk about the Devil Wears Prada, obviously, but 27 dresses. was such a great movie.
Thank you. I wrote that. It was inspired by my best friend had been in about 12 or 13 weddings at the time that I pitched that. And I thought that was psychotic and fascinating. To me, it was about being a people pleaser, which is a very common thing that happens to women.
And it was interesting as we were trying to get it made, people and particularly male executives really balked at that idea, which they thought was... about weakness.
Wow.
But I think that that ability that women have to sort of shape shift and understand intuitively what needs to be done in a moment is a strength. And I think she's a very strong character, actually. That really is what that movie is about to me, which is how you end up being so beloved by so many people. And is there a cost to that? So interesting. Have you had your people pleasing years?
You know, it's funny. That's the one that is the least like me. And that movie is written from the point of view of the best friend, Judy Greer, in a funny way, if you look at it, even though she's not in every scene. The movie's POV on her is, what are you doing?
Mm-hmm.
I'm half Israeli, half French North African. And we had very honest, outspoken set of parents in our family. My brother is too. And so I was not taught some of the American, but both my parents are immigrants and we were raised in New Jersey, which is just, was a strange sitcom. But I wasn't socialized in girls having to please others. My mother was a grand dame.
actually born quite poor, but like all French women, she was a queen with Hermes. They sort of somehow hand you Hermes when you're, you know, not anymore. It didn't used to cost what it costs now. For example, every dating story my mother ever told was, you know, I was very beautiful and I met a man and he wanted to marry me. And I said, no, you are not handsome enough. You are not rich enough.
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