The more times one watches The Devil Wears Prada, the less defensible Adrian Grenier’s character, The World’s Least Supportive Boyfriend Nate, seems. Despite serving as the seeming moral high ground and representing Andy’s wholesome past as she rises through the ranks at Runway, his actions are difficult to stand by, making Andy’s decision to abandon the magazine and follow him to Boston almost difficult to watch.
Nate mocks Andy’s appearance when she tells him she nabbed a role at the prestigious magazine instead of congratulating her (“Was it a phone interview?”). He sulks when she misses his birthday party for a high-profile gala instrumental for her career. He dismisses her new clothes, even when she is clearly excited about them, mocks the fashion industry as a whole, and instead of commiserating with her over her challenging job, dismisses her as “one of them.” Oh, and remember that scene where he’s upset with her for refusing to quit?
Now, screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna is addressing the widespread resentment of her supporting character.
“That was a ‘girlfriend’ part, really,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “That’s a part that a lot of women end up playing, the ‘why aren’t you home more,’ the naggy wife. I have to say, that character was the biggest challenge to write, and oddly, the character [director David Frankel] and I talked about the most, because we wanted to make sure he wasn’t a pain in the ass, but he is the person who is trying to say, ‘Is this who you want to be morally?’”
McKenna also rejects the notion that Nate is restricting her career ambitions.
“I think that now, however many years later, what people focus on is that he’s trying to restrict her ambition,” she continued. “But her ambition is going towards something that she doesn’t really believe in, so he has a point. The part that makes me giggly when I read is him being upset about his birthday. It’s pretty whiny — but he does say later that it wasn’t what he was upset about.”
She may defend Nate’s whininess, but she doesn’t go so far with Andy’s unsupportive friends, who she agrees are “not great.”
“The friends are not very supportive of her! But I will say, I think a lot of young people, if you have the experience of being in a job that your friends kind of envy, sometimes they’re not great about it. And so, they take the Marc Jacobs purse, but they give her a lot of shit.”
Nate may have Andy’s best interests at heart, but rewatching the movie, it’s hard not to see it as anything other than a young woman outgrowing her college boyfriend and recognizing that she deserves more support in a relationship.
