Conrad Ricamora’s Devil Wears Prada 2 Role Was Cut — His Reaction Is the Best Part

Two days into The Devil Wears Prada 2‘s rolling press cycle, the cast is still surfacing previously-unseen behind-the-scenes details — and the latest one is also the most bittersweet. Conrad Ricamora, the actor and Tony nominee best known for How to Get Away With Murder, Fire Island, and his stage turn in Oh, Mary!, has revealed that he filmed a substantial role in the sequel as Andy Sachs‘s roommate — only for the entire part to be cut from the final film during late-stage script revisions.

Ricamora made the news public this week alongside two affectionate behind-the-scenes photographs of him goofing around with Anne Hathaway on set. The pictures, posted to his social media, instantly became some of the most-shared Devil Wears Prada 2 content of the rollout. Here’s what happened, why these cuts happen at this stage of major studio films, and what it tells us about how the sequel was assembled.

What Conrad Ricamora has said

According to Variety’s reporting, Ricamora was cast as Andy Sachs’ roommate for The Devil Wears Prada 2 — a role that, on paper, would have given him recurring scenes opposite Anne Hathaway across the film’s first act. He filmed those scenes during the production’s main 2025 New York shoot. By the time editorial work on the film moved into late winter 2026, the roommate storyline had been excised from the cut.

Ricamora himself was philosophical about it in his social media post — characterising the cut as a normal part of the studio film process, thanking Anne Hathaway by name, and posting two on-set photographs that have already gone viral. “Sometimes the scene works for the movie, and sometimes the scene works for the cutting room,” he reportedly wrote.

Director David Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna have not yet publicly addressed the cut. But this kind of late-stage subplot trimming is, by every account from people in the industry, completely standard.

Why scenes get cut at this stage

The decision to drop a fully-shot subplot is one of the more painful editorial calls a studio film can make. It almost always comes down to one of three reasons:

• Pacing. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is reportedly running closer to two hours than the original’s tight 109 minutes. Cutting subplots is the standard tool for tightening a film without losing the major beats.
• Tonal calibration. A roommate storyline typically functions as comic relief or emotional grounding for the main character. If the rest of the film is already delivering those notes through other characters, the subplot becomes redundant.
• Test screenings. Major studio comedies test extensively before locking the cut. If audiences responded more strongly to other plotlines and the roommate scenes scored neutrally, the editorial team will recommend the cut to the director.

None of these reasons reflect on the actor’s performance. They reflect the structural needs of the finished film — and Ricamora, an experienced and well-regarded character actor, will know that better than most.

Who is Conrad Ricamora?

For viewers who haven’t yet caught up: Conrad Ricamora is a Filipino-American actor, singer and stage performer with one of the more interesting career arcs in his cohort. He came up through musical theatre — including the original off-Broadway production of Here Lies Love — before being cast in 2014 as Oliver Hampton on Shonda Rhimes’ How to Get Away With Murder, a role he played across the show’s six-season run.

• How to Get Away With Murder (2014–2020) — Oliver, one half of one of network television’s first prominent gay Asian-American couples.
• Fire Island (2022) — Hulu’s celebrated rom-com remix of Pride and Prejudice, in which he played Will, the Mr. Darcy figure. The performance was widely cited as a breakout.
• Oh, Mary! (2023–2025) — Cole Escola’s surprise Broadway hit, in which Ricamora’s performance earned him a Tony nomination.
• The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon and various supporting screen work across the past five years.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 would have been his highest-profile mainstream studio comedy role to date. The cut is, in that sense, a bigger career disappointment than the typical subplot trim — but Ricamora’s reaction has been entirely characteristic of his measured public profile.

The Anne Hathaway connection

The two on-set photographs Ricamora posted are, by themselves, a small story. They show what looks like a genuinely warm working relationship between him and Hathaway — the kind of off-camera dynamic that can get built up over weeks of filming and then live on long after the scenes themselves disappear.

Hathaway has not publicly addressed the cut. She rarely comments on production decisions during a film’s rollout, particularly on choices that aren’t hers to make. But the fact that Ricamora was comfortable enough to post the photos publicly — and warm enough to thank her by name — is its own quiet endorsement of the working environment on set.

Other cuts and cameos

Ricamora’s role isn’t the only thing that’s been re-shaped during the editorial process. Reports surrounding The Devil Wears Prada 2 have suggested that the film features dozens of fashion-industry cameos — many of which were also reduced or cut entirely as the runtime was tightened. The sequel reportedly features brief on-screen appearances from real designers, magazine editors, and models, in the same documentary-flavoured tradition as the first film’s runway sequences.

What survived the cut, what didn’t, and which extended scenes might appear on the eventual home-video release is, at this stage, something only the editorial team and the director know. We’ll find out the rest when the film opens on May 1.

Will the deleted scenes be released?

This is the question Ricamora’s fans have been asking since the news broke. The honest answer: it depends on how the studio handles the home-video release. Most major studio comedies do release deleted-scene packages with their digital and Blu-ray editions. If The Devil Wears Prada 2 follows that pattern, Ricamora’s scenes are very likely to surface — possibly later in 2026 or in early 2027 — as a deleted-scenes featurette.

Less commonly, in the streaming era, some studios have started releasing extended cuts with the home-video release. If 20th Century Studios goes that route, the roommate subplot could even return as a partially-restored scene set within a longer cut of the film.

For now, Ricamora has handled the news exactly the way actors are advised to handle it: warmly, professionally, and with a couple of well-timed photographs that became their own kind of consolation prize.

Frequently asked questions

For more on The Devil Wears Prada 2, see our complete guide to the sequel, our Movies section, and the wider Celebrities section.

Watch the visual story: Conrad Ricamora's DWP2 Role Cut — Web Story