BJ Novak on Being the Worst-Dressed Character in 'The Devil Wears Prada 2' — And Loving Every Minute

BJ Novak Embraces His Role as Fashion's Biggest Offender in 'The Devil Wears Prada 2'

When BJ Novak landed a supporting role in The Devil Wears Prada 2, he did what he always does when joining a new production — he packed a bag of his own clothes and showed up ready to contribute to his own wardrobe. What he wasn't prepared for was walking into a two-story costume warehouse stocked with contributions from virtually every major designer on the planet.

"I showed up to the wardrobe department on my first day having brought my own things," Novak recalls with a laugh. "Then I walk into this two-story warehouse that every designer in the world has been flooding them with requests."

The irony? His character doesn't wear any of it.

Playing Fashion's Biggest Villain — In Sweatpants

Set two decades after the beloved original film, the sequel revisits the fictional Runway magazine at a moment of institutional crisis. Novak plays the publishing house's heir, a tech-obsessed, athleisure-wearing antagonist who finds himself almost immediately at odds with the legendary — and still absolutely terrifying — editor Miranda Priestly, once again brought to life by Meryl Streep.

His character barely looks up from his phone, dresses exclusively in tech-brand gear and athletic wear, and radiates a kind of gleeful disrespect for everything the fashion world holds sacred. "At least it was a very comfortable wardrobe," Novak quips.

For a man who grew up in Boston — a city he lovingly describes as dressing people "like Fisher-Price characters: the dad, the construction worker, the mail person" — the role may have been closer to home than he'd like to admit. "I play a character in the movie who is such an offensively dressed outsider to the fashion world," he says. "So I think that probably was good casting."

He's quick to note that his close friend Mindy Kaling, also a Boston native, took a very different path on the style front.

An Unexpected Phone Call That Changed Everything

Novak didn't go looking for this role. The opportunity came through screenwriter and producer Aline Brosh McKenna, a friend who sent him a cryptic text that simply read: "Let me know what you think!"

Confused, Novak assumed she had messaged the wrong person — or worse, was trying to offload a troubled pilot script onto him. It wasn't until she called him directly that the full picture came into focus.

"She's like, 'It's The Devil Wears Prada 2. You play so-and-so. All of your scenes are with Meryl Streep. Everyone already approved you. We shoot in the summer in New York, Milan and Lake Como,'" Novak recounts. "This is an insane phone call. This is not generally the call you get."

Holding His Own Opposite the Greatest Actress Alive

For a self-described overthinker, the psychological challenge of playing someone who openly disrespects Miranda Priestly — and therefore Meryl Streep — was considerable.

"I really had to psych myself up," Novak admits. "When I got this role, my first instinct was just to be in awe of the greatest actor of all time, in one of her best roles ever, and enjoy the ride. But that's the wrong approach."

His reframe was rooted in genuine respect: if you truly admire someone of Streep's caliber, you owe it to them to show up as the best possible scene partner, not a starstruck bystander. He shelved the reverence during filming and saved it for after the cameras stopped rolling.

What surprised him most was discovering Streep's comedic sensibility. "Comedy people gravitate towards each other," he says. "On set, I got the sense that she's a comedy person in some way. It was so much fun."

A Writer First — Everything Else Follows

Despite the high-profile nature of this project, Novak is candid about the fact that acting is not his primary occupation. His 2022 directorial debut, the dark comedy Vengeance, remains his most ambitious on-screen undertaking, and he's largely been focused on other creative ventures since — including a growing food business and a string of bestselling children's books, most notably The Book With No Pictures, which he acknowledges is probably the single most financially successful project of his career.

"It's the one I thought about money least as I was making it," he says. "Which is a nice lesson."

When asked whether he actively pursues more acting work, Novak is refreshingly unbothered. "What am I supposed to do? Stare at my phone harder? People will call." He cites directors-turned-occasional-actors like Rob Reiner, Sydney Pollack, and Greta Gerwig as his model — creative people who act brilliantly when someone comes calling, but whose identity isn't defined by it.

Redefining What It Means to Be a Writer

At his core, Novak sees everything through the lens of writing — even directing. "If I'm directing, I'm just writing with the camera, writing with the score, writing with the actors," he explains. He argues that the word "writing" itself deserves a rebrand, stripped of its associations with spelling tests and grammar rules.

"There are so many people that are good at those parts and are really boring," he says. "It has so little to do with spelling or grammar or the things that intimidate people out of writing."

He's equally passionate about expanding his work in children's literature, arguing that comedy for kids remains an underexplored space. "Kids being funny isn't unlocked enough. Not enough people are doing it right," he says, confirming that more books are in the pipeline.

The Disappearing Act of 'The Premise'

Not everything in Novak's creative catalog has survived the digital age. His FX anthology series The Premise quietly vanished from streaming platforms during the wave of content purges that swept through the industry a few years ago — and Novak found out the same way most fans did: through a confused text from an actor, followed by a tweet.

"It just disappeared," he says. "And there are no hard copies of something like that. I don't know where it is or where it went."

Does he have his own digital copy? He pauses. "I don't think so. Maybe they did it for my own good."

With The Devil Wears Prada 2 positioning him as one of the season's most talked-about supporting players, it's clear that BJ Novak — writer, director, children's book author, reluctant fashion disaster — is more than comfortable operating on his own terms. Whether Hollywood keeps calling is, by his own philosophy, entirely up to them.