Hollywood actress Meryl Streep has said it was "astonishing" to witness Lady Gaga perform a song for The Devil Wears Prada 2.
The US musician has recorded a song with Doechii for the heavily-anticipated sequel, which was released this week and sees Streep, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt all return to their roles from the original 2006 movie.
Appearing on BBC Radio 2 on Friday morning with some of her castmates, Streep said of Lady Gaga: "Not only did we get to meet her, I got to act with her, and she got to act me off the screen, and we also got to witness her.
"First of all, she was in the middle of a world tour, and she just flew down and did this for us, but we got to see her perform a song that she wrote for the movie and just to see how a performer of that calibre puts together a performance, just really on the fly.
"There was not much rehearsal anything, and she did it numerous times in different ways. It was all sort of improvised in the moment, pretty astonishing.
"What a musician, what an artist, she is."
Hathaway added: "And really sweet. Really sweet, really humble. Was just so happy to be there.
"I mean just like you meet those people and you're like: 'Oh gosh, you really are a starlet, aren’t you?’"
Asked if she had ever expected to reprise the role of formidable magazine editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly, 20 years since the original film, Streep, 76, said: "I thought I was retired.
"At 56 and, you know, had a good run, made a few movies. I never dreamed 20 years later I’d be back at it. I just never imagined it."
Streep said she felt there was "more freedom" in playing Priestly’s fierce character in the second film, suggested to be based on real-life Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
Streep said: "I think in the beginning, people were afraid of hurting Anna’s feelings – Anna Wintour – because the book was… by a person that used to work at Vogue.
"And so I didn’t have any interest in replicating anything about her. I wanted Miranda to be her own thing.
"But this one is just made up. It doesn’t have any relation to anything real. And so there was, I think, a little bit more freedom this time around."
Streep said a sequel was suggested around three years after the original film came out, but it was many years later before anything was carried out.
"There needed to be an idea that really sunk its teeth into the present moment," she told Radio 2 presenter Gary Davies.
"There has to be a reason for something to come along, not just to make money.
"It has to be – it has to own its space – and we were all picky by that time.
"You know, we all didn’t want to come back just to come back. We just wanted it to be good. And Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote the first one, got an idea, and she wrote it down two years ago. And I think it all came together."
Source: Press Association
