On March 15, 2026, during the 98th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Anna Wintour walked onstage alongside Anne Hathaway to present Best Costume Design and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
What followed was approximately three minutes of television that became one of the most discussed moments of the entire ceremony, and given that Conan O’Brien was hosting and Michael B. Jordan was winning Best Actor, that is saying something.
It started before the nominees were even read. Hathaway, standing at the podium beside the woman who inspired the character she played in The Devil Wears Prada twenty years ago, turned to Wintour and asked with studied nervousness, “Anna, just curious, what do you think of my dress tonight?”
Wintour did not answer. She kept her expression flat, maintained her signature composure, and said, “And the nominees for Best Costume Design are.”
The Dolby Theatre erupted. The callback was immediate and unmistakable to anyone who had ever seen the 2006 film, which, at this point, is most of the world.
The second beat arrived minutes later, during the Best Makeup and Hairstyling segment. Hathaway turned to Wintour and asked if she would like to read the nominees. Wintour replied, “Thank you, Emily.”
Not Andy. Emily. As in Emily Charlton, Emily Blunt’s character from the film, Miranda Priestly’s razor-tongued senior assistant who spent most of the 2006 movie looking at Hathaway’s Andy Sachs with barely concealed contempt.
In the world of The Devil Wears Prada, Miranda Priestly is famously indifferent to the distinction between her assistants, she calls them both Emily. Wintour, playing into the joke with the precision of someone who has spent decades being the most controlled person in any room she enters, delivered the line with the exact deadpan timing that made it land as well as it did.
The Academy’s official social media accounts posted the clip. It was shared millions of times. Fan reactions ranged from delight to secondhand embarrassment to full emotional breakdown.
One widely circulated post on X simply read, “Ouch. Emotional damage.” Another, “Anne’s face after is so funny.” A third, “Devil Wears Prada reunion we didn’t know we needed. Anna channeling Miranda hard, savage and iconic.”
Who Is Anna Wintour?
Anna Wintour, 76, has served as the editor of American Vogue since 1988, a tenure of nearly four decades that made her the most powerful figure in fashion publishing and, by extension, in the broader culture of fashion itself.
She currently holds the title of Global Editorial Director of Vogue and Chief Content Officer of Condé Nast, the publishing company that owns Vogue and dozens of other titles.
She has attended every major fashion show, shaped every major trend, and influenced the careers of more designers, photographers, and models than any other single person in the industry.
She is also, famously, the woman widely believed to have inspired the character of Miranda Priestly in Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel The Devil Wears Prada, and by extension, Meryl Streep’s portrayal of the character in the 2006 film.
Weisberger worked as Wintour’s assistant before writing the book. Wintour has always handled the comparison with the kind of measured ambiguity that is itself entirely Miranda Priestly.
In 2024, she told the BBC, “It’s for the audience and for the people I work with to decide if there are any similarities between me and Miranda Priestly.”
In a 2025 interview, she said she found the film “highly enjoyable” and “a fair shot.”
In an earlier podcast interview she noted,
“I went to the premiere wearing Prada, completely having no idea what the film was going to be about. And I think that the fashion industry were very sweetly concerned for me about the film, that it was going to paint me in some kind of difficult light.”
Appearing onstage at the Oscars to present costume and makeup awards, the two most fashion-adjacent categories on the ballot, with Hathaway herself, and leaning fully into the joke, was the clearest signal yet that Wintour has fully made peace with her fictional alter ego.
The question of whether she had previously harbored any residual resentment toward the film received a definitive answer the moment she deadpanned “And the nominees are” without breaking stride.
What Did Wintour Wear?
Wintour arrived in custom Dior by Jonathan Anderson, a flower-embroidered design with a black lace jacket that stayed fully within her established visual language while being unmistakably red carpet appropriate.
She kept her signature sunglasses on for much of the segment, which added to the effect.
Hathaway wore Valentino couture, a choice that carried personal weight. She has spoken publicly about her close relationship with the late Valentino Garavani and the appearance was widely read as a tribute.
She completed the look with Roger Vivier heels and Bulgari jewels. The two of them together on that stage, one in Dior, one in Valentino, both playing a meta joke at the intersection of fashion history and cinema history, was genuinely one of the more stylistically complete moments the Oscars has produced in years.
Why They Were Both There: The Devil Wears Prada 2
The Oscars appearance was not random. The Devil Wears Prada 2 opens in theaters on May 1, 2026, and the entire segment was, among other things, an extremely elegant piece of promotional stagecraft.
The sequel brings back the core cast in full. Meryl Streep returns as Miranda Priestly, Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs, Emily Blunt as Emily Charlton, and Stanley Tucci as Nigel.
The returning creative team includes director David Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, both of whom made the original. New additions to the cast include Kenneth Branagh as Miranda’s latest husband, along with Lucy Liu, Justin Theroux, B.J. Novak, Simone Ashley, Pauline Chalamet, Patrick Brammall, and Caleb Hearon in roles that have not been fully disclosed.
Sydney Sweeney, Donatella Versace, and Lady Gaga are all reported to have cameo appearances.
The film’s plot, as confirmed by the trailers and production reporting, follows Miranda as she navigates the decline of print publishing and Runway’s fight for survival in a media landscape that no longer centers the fashion magazine the way it once did.
Andy returns to Runway as its new Features Editor, a move that reconnects her with Miranda and with Emily, who has become the head of a luxury brand that holds the advertising funding Runway desperately needs.
The central conflict is Miranda versus Emily, a power dynamic that flips the original film’s dynamic entirely. The assistant is now in a position of leverage over the boss.
The trailer, released in February 2026 during the Grammy Awards and set to Madonna’s Vogue, was viewed more than 220 million times in its first 24 hours, reportedly the most-watched trailer in 20th Century Studios’ history.
The Oscars moment, timed three weeks before the film opens, was both a genuine piece of television and a flawlessly executed reminder that the franchise is back.
That Wintour herself was willing to be part of it, to stand onstage at the Academy Awards and say “Thank you, Emily” to Anne Hathaway’s face with perfect comic timing, is the kind of cultural moment that cannot be engineered.
It has to be earned over twenty years of a film embedding itself so deeply into popular consciousness that the real person it was based on is willing to play along.
The Best Costume Design award that night went to Kate Hawley for Frankenstein.
The Best Makeup and Hairstyling award also went to Frankenstein. Both announcements were received warmly. Neither was talked about afterward quite as much as “Thank you, Emily.”
