I’ll never know what it was like to be a journalist in the ’90s and Noughties, but I imagine – from all the rom-coms I was raised on, in which journalism was for some reason the career (or career aspiration) of every protagonist – that it mostly involved wearing a claw clip, having a walk-in wardrobe and embarking on undercover “assignments”. In other words: a lot of fun. I’m sure that plenty of journalists of my generation – millennials and zillennials – chose to pursue the job after watching these films. Little did they know that modern journalism would involve things like “search engine optimisation” and “Slack huddles”. But that’s a different conversation entirely.
When The Devil Wears Prada 2 arrives in cinemas this week, it will offer that once familiar but now incredibly rare concept: a supremely watchable film with a journalist at its centre. But before then, it’s worth taking a look back at the canon. Below, the best rom-coms about journalists to watch ahead of (or after) The Devil Wears Prada 2.
Never Been Kissed (1999)
A fully grown adult pretending to be a high school student in order to gather information on “contemporary teenage culture” would be both deranged and criminal in real life, but it works fantastically as the plot of a ’90s film. Here, 25-year-old Chicago Sun-Times copy editor Josie Geller – played by a baby-faced Drew Barrymore – goes undercover at her former high school, the same place where she was once relentlessly bullied. Don’t worry, though, she doesn’t fall for one of the students – just, er, her teacher.
How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days (2003)
In what has to be one of the best cult classics of this ilk, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days follows Andie Anderson (Kate Hudson) – a columnist for women’s magazine Composure – who embarks on a mischievous but also kind of creepy undercover assignment: she must date a man before driving him away “using the classic mistakes women make” (I don’t have the bandwidth to go into the sexism, this was 2003). Cue plenty of hysterical, cringe-worthy and unhinged scenarios that ultimately conclude with – you guessed it – our protagonist learning how to love.
13 Going On 30 (2004)
I love this movie because it makes being a journalist in your 30s look like the chicest and most aspirational thing a woman can do. It also contains the sort of loopy, supernatural plot that we rarely see in films anymore: Jenna Rink, a 13-year-old girl in 1987 (Christa B Allen), wakes up one morning to discover that she’s now a high-powered, 30-year-old fashion editor (Jennifer Garner) in 2004. Somehow, she not only retains the gig but thrives within it, with those around her – and her teen self – learning a few lessons along the way.
Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
We don’t tend to think of Renée Zellweger’s Bridget Jones as a journalist – she mostly smokes cigarettes and writes in her diary – but let’s not forget her role as a roving TV reporter for news outlet Sit Up Britain, for which she covers such pressing issues as *checks notes* skydiving, a fire station on Bonfire Night, and famously, the “Aghani-Heaney case”. In the Bridget Jones extended universe, it’s a job that eventually leads to a successful career as a screenwriter and TV producer – plus a really nice big house in Hampstead Village.
Sleepless In Seattle (1993)
Written and directed by the icon that was Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail), who actually began her own career in journalism, Sleepless in Seattle is a classic. The premise is this: an eight-year-old calls into a radio station requesting a new wife for his recently widowed and grieving father, Sam (Tom Hanks). One listener is Annie Reed (Meg Ryan), a Baltimore Sun reporter who is unhappily engaged to someone else. She writes a letter to Sam that she ultimately decides against sending – though her friend and editor mails it for her. You can probably guess the rest.
Almost Famous (2000)
This one’s a little different from the rest in the sense that our central journalist isn’t a glossy 30-something in a fitted blazer with a blowout, but a teenager (played by a very sweet looking Patrick Fugit) following a band on tour for Rolling Stone in the 1970s (I’m using the term “rom-com” very loosely here). Even so, I had to include it as it’s such a classic. Mainly due to wise-beyond-her-years groupie Penny Lane, played by Kate Hudson, who would singlehandedly inspire everyone’s autumn coat choices for decades to come.
The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
And here we have the mother of them all, The Devil Wears Prada, about an aspiring journalist, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), who takes a job as the second assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the terrifyingly icy editor-in-chief of Runway magazine. Visually sumptuous and endlessly quotable, there’s a reason people still debate this movie (who’s the real villain? Is cerulean blue all that bad?). The highly anticipated sequel has some very tall Chanel boots to fill.
