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In addition to starring in HBO’s “Entourage”, Adrian Grenier also played Nate, boyfriend of Anne Hathaway’s character, Andy, in “The Devil Wears Prada”.
In recent years, Nate has been the focus of backlash for being a terrible boyfriend, primarily for a scene in which he has a temper-tantrum meltdown when Andy misses his birthday dinner because she’s been tasked with a major assignment at the fashion magazine at which she works.
During a virtual cast reunion for Entertainment Weekly, Grenier was joined by Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt, along with the film’s director, David Frankel, and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna.
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“I didn’t see some of the subtleties and the nuance of this character and what it represented in the film until the wisdom of the masses came online and started to push against the character and throw him under the bus, and I got flak,” Grenier said.
“All those memes that came out were shocking to me. It hadn’t occurred to me until I started to really think about it, and perhaps it was because I was as immature as Nate was at the time, and in many ways he’s very selfish and self-involved, it was all about him, he wasn’t extending himself to support Andy in her career,” Grenier added. “At the end of the day, it’s just a birthday, right? It’s not the end of the world. I might’ve been as immature as him at the time, so I personally couldn’t see his shortcomings. But after time to reflect and much deliberation, I’ve come to realize the truth in that perspective.”
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Hathaway, however, admitted she had sympathy for the character. “Nate was pouty on his birthday because his girlfriend wasn’t there! In hindsight, I’m sure he wishes he made a different choice, but who doesn’t? We’ve all been brats at different points. We all just need to live, let live, do better!” she explained.
McKenna said she wasn’t surprised by the reaction, because she’d written the character as a gender-flipped variation on “the girlfriend” trope, who warns Andy that she’s figuratively selling her soul to the devil.
“He’s saying [she’s] following the devil down the wrong path. And that’s his role, which is often a role played by women, which is to remind the character of their moral intentions,” McKenna said. “I think he isn’t unsupportive of her work; he’s happy for her, at the end. I don’t think it’s like he doesn’t want her to work. What he is critical of is that the values that she set out for herself, she is not following through on, and there’s a hypocrisy there. Her intentions were not to become a fashionista in Chanel boots and jet off to Paris…. Andy really is losing herself.”
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Still, Grenier said he now sees that the criticism of Nate is justified.
“[Andy] needed more out of the world than Nate, and she was achieving it. He couldn’t support her like she needed to because he was a fragile, wounded boy. There’s a selfishness and self-centeredness in that, and I think Andy needed to be held by a man who was an adult,” he said. “He couldn’t support her like she needed because he was a fragile, wounded boy…. on behalf of all the Nates out there: Come on! Step it up!”