Meet Patrick Brammall, the Unproblematic Heartthrob of The Devil Wears Prada 2

“Once Meryl leaves, the party’s over, really,” Patrick Brammall tells me the morning after the starry world premiere of The Devil Wears Prada 2 in New York City. We’re seated at a corner table in the bar at the Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown, where the Los Angeles–based Brammall is promoting the highly anticipated sequel.

Brammall recalls what it was like watching himself play Peter, the love interest of Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada 2, on the huge screen before the film’s opening on May 1. “I didn’t suck,” he exhales. “That’s the main thing, just dodging the humiliation of not being good.” His character is a divorced contractor who meets Andy on her search for a modern apartment. Originally written as a guy from Brooklyn, Peter was made Australian when Brammall was cast. “That’s why I was relieved to see it last night,” he says. “I feel like I belong in the movie…. The function of that character is to be a supportive guy for Andy Sachs. It’s a nice, easy chemistry. I mean, it’s very easy working with Annie. She’s so available and present in the scene. She’s the real deal.”

Coming off an evening that included giddy meetings with Robert De Niro and Andy Serkis, and a morning spent on Good Morning America, Brammall nevertheless appears chipper without the aid of any caffeine during our sit-down. He wears a denim button-up over a hunter green shirt and slips on a pair of tortoiseshell eyeglasses to scan the menu—we split a burger and truffle fries when 11:30 a.m. is deemed by the establishment to be 90 minutes too early for an order of sliders—and sign the check: “Let’s let Uncle Walt pay for this,” Brammall says with a wave of his hand. (The Devil Wears Prada 2 is being distributed by 20th Century Studios, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company.) He’s familiar with this part of a profile. “Some years ago…there was a New York Times article. It was a profile piece on me…and it was a nice article. But then it said, ‘Brammall,’ whatever age it was, ‘blandly handsome and on the comfy side of fit.’ And I was like, What the fuck?” he recalls with a surprised laugh.

Brammall has already earned some status and a legion of celebrity fans, including Lena Dunham, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Richard Curtis, and Andrew Scott, thanks to Colin From Accounts, the romantic comedy series he cocreated, cowrote, and stars in with his wife, Harriet Dyer. But he acknowledges that his latest project marks a turning point. “I look at the last six weeks of my life—in that time, we wrapped season three of Colin From Accounts, I turned 50, Hari and I clocked up five years married. I did this Devil Wears Prada premiere. Like, what is my fucking life?” Brammall shakes his head. “This is one of those rare moments when you get to stand on the peak and look down at the valley. But when you’re in it, you’re just cutting branches with a hatchet.”