Emily Blunt Says She Was Asked to Wear Something 'More Stylish' for Devil Wears Prada Audition

Emily Blunt questioned her personal style choices while auditioning for The Devil Wears Prada.

The 40-year-old confessed at An Evening With... Emily Blunt held at The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles on Thursday night to moderator Rob Marshall that no one knew who she was at the time.

She was at 20th Century Fox Studios (now called 20th Century Studios) to audition for another film role when someone asked her if she'd audition for a movie. Blunt recalled the individual describing the role as "just this little thing with Meryl Streep."

She said she was running late for a flight and felt "frantic and chaotic" as she read for the role of Miranda Priestley's (Meryl Streep) first assistant, also named Emily, in the hit 2006 film.

Blunt almost missed her flight and soon got a callback from the film's director, David Frankel, asking her to come in for another audition.

"He said, 'Look, I would cast you, but the studio was wondering if you could wear something more stylish,' " Blunt recalled. "To be fair, I was wearing a hoodie and jeans when I auditioned for it."

In the film, Blunt's character Emily Charlton is often running around stressed while she's trying to meet Miranda's demands and keep Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), the new hire and Miranda's second assistant, in line. Blunt said she thought her hurried vibe as she worried about catching her flight might've worked to her advantage — but her outfit certainly didn't.

The star then tried to step up her wardrobe game for her second audition in London. She did not specifically describe the outfit she pulled together from her closet for the occasion, but she noted: "I thought looked fairly chic. I don't know, it probably was awful."

The next day, Blunt got the call that she was cast in The Devil Wears Prada. The mother-of-two said she cried upon receiving the news.

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"I mean the experience was, it was heaven, that movie was heaven," Blunt said of her time filming with Streep and Hathaway. "We had a party. It was just, you can tell it was just exquisitely fun."

No matter what the character of Emily was wearing, Blunt said she made the artistic choice to make her seem desperate, rather than "cutting" and "ascetic."

"I think that desperation is funnier… Well, it was the time of my life," the actress mused.