Simone Ashley on The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Her Debut EP

Simone Ashley spent last summer living the kind of life “a million girls would kill for.” She’d been cast in The Devil Wears Prada 2 as Amari, the new first assistant to Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly, taking on the role that Emily Blunt first made so famous. Ashley moved across the Atlantic for the shoot, and in the gaps between call times, was in the studio writing what would become Songs I Wrote in New York, her debut EP, released last month.

“I had the best summer of my life,” she tells W of that time. On the EP’s opener, “Sublime,” she describes the exact feeling: “I felt so lucky just riding bikes in New York City/In the summer, and nothing could touch me/Kind of like when you were a kid.”

It’s not hard to understand why. Like for so many Millennials, The Devil Wears Prada was a fixture of the 31-year-old’s childhood: “one of the movies I would watch a few times a year, at least,” she says. Finding out they were making a sequel, let alone that she’d been cast in it, was life-changing.

Until now, the British-born actress has been known for playing Kate Sharma, the sharp-witted, stubborn lead of Bridgerton season two, whose slow-burn courtship with Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) quickly became one of the series’s most beloved arcs. (She returned for seasons three and four, and may reappear in season five.) In Devil Wears Prada 2, Ashley is once again unassailable, playing Priestly’s hyper-competent assistant.

Ashley took cues from Blunt and Hathaway, the latter of whom she “spent a lot of time with” on set. But she makes the character her own. With a high ponytail and higher heels, she’s a calmer version of Blunt’s tightly wound Emily, maintaining perfect composure while keeping Priestly in check when she drops problematic phrases in staff meetings, or gently but firmly putting the second assistant (Caleb Hearon) in his place.

Then there are the clothes. Costume designer Molly Rogers dresses Amari in a near-uninterrupted run of looks—archive pulls, runway, custom—with Thom Browne suiting (and a recurring tie motif) and Dolce & Gabbana featured heavily. Ashley names the Browne pieces and the Milan Dolce looks as her favorites. “Molly has just such an amazing imagination,” Ashley says of working with the Patricia Field protégée. The film’s Met Gala sequence is the showstopper, with Amari arriving in the custom Jean Paul Gaultier gown that Miley Cyrus wore to the 2019 Grammys. For Ashley—who has tended to favor princess-style dresses from houses like Valentino, Prada, and Versace—the look adds an edgy twist to her red-carpet oeuvre, even if it’s fictional.

As for the music, Songs I Wrote in New York is a guitar-forward collection of delicate pop songs with their own soulful edge, with Ashley’s vocals both controlled and emotive. She worked on the EP with Fraser T. Smith, best known for his work with Stormzy and Adele, and the production is tight and grounded. Even as she participates in the massive Prada 2 rollout, Ashley is nurturing her musical identity, working on what will be a full album to be released at the end of the year. As for why she’s decided to embrace her lifelong love of singing at this moment, she echoes the spontaneous spirit of the EP: “Why not now?”