Over a career spanning 40 years, we have seen Teri Hatcher take on renowned screen parts, including Lois Lane, a Desperate Housewife and even a Bond girl. Now, HELLO! can exclusively reveal that the actress’s next role will see her portray another beloved character: the acerbic fashion boss Miranda Priestly in the West End production of The Devil Wears Prada.
She will be relocating to London from Los Angeles to replace Vanessa Williams in the hit musical from October and, as the actress reveals at her HELLO! photoshoot in Paris, she is hoping that her forthcoming London adventure will herald a new chapter in her life.
“I've experienced and grown so much, and I get to bring all of that into my Devil Wears Prada performance,” Teri, 61, tells us. “I feel like this is a gift for me, to arrive into a Teri Hatcher that I haven't got to be yet, and I'm so excited for it.”
She chose Paris as the fabulous location for her photoshoot because of the city's central role in the Devil Wears Prada storyline. The former Desperate Housewives star has yet to see the London production but her daughter, Emerson, 28, has been in the audience at the Dominion Theatre and was instrumental in encouraging her to take the part.
“She saw Vanessa in it and said it was great, so when the opportunity came my way she was the first person to say: ‘Oh my god, you have to do it, you're going to have so much fun.’”
Teri adds: “You just know when you read the right script. It speaks to you like it's yours and then it might meander around the universe, might take a little bit of time to make it happen for you, but you know it when you see it. And I feel that way about Miranda. I think this is the right time in my life for me to bring the right qualities of my experience and my talent and my being to this show.”
A “huge fan” of both the original 2006 movie and this year’s hit sequel, which saw Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci reprise their roles to much acclaim, Teri says she always has it playing in the background when she is prepping for her lavish Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.
© Valentin Le Cron“The warmth that I have for the story itself is truly on a cellular level. It's almost like a fairytale at this point, which is why I think audiences respond to it so much. I think, more than ever, what people need is a break from how difficult the world can feel.”
And Teri knows how to provide that feeling more than most. Born in California, she studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater and quickly landed small parts on TV and in film, working with stars including Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell and Kevin Bacon. Her big break came at 28 when she starred as Lois Lane in the TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman opposite Dean Cain.
The success of the show catapulted her to worldwide fame, although her small part in the classic comedy Seinfeld in 1993 also denoted her cult status; she created an immediate catchphrase with her response – “They’re real and they’re spectacular” – to claims that she had undergone a breast augmentation.
At the height of her fame, she also starred opposite Pierce Brosnan as 007 in the 1997 Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies and landed roles in movies such as 2001’s Spy Kids. Her fame reached another peak in 2004 when she starred as the lovelorn Susan Mayer in the hit TV show Desperate Housewives, alongside Eva Longoria, Marcia Cross and Felicity Huffman. Teri won a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award for her portrayal in 2005.
While TV is her primary medium of acting, she has also appeared in a number of musicals, including Cabaret and The Addams Family, which have left her with fond memories as she looks ahead to The Devil Wears Prada.
“There is a chemistry to being a performer in front of an audience, who give you something back,” she says of acting on stage. “It's that community of support between the cast that you only really find in the theatre, because in movies and television you're not all on the set at the same time.”
However, she admits that making the decision to move overseas temporarily was a tough one, as she is the primary caregiver for her parents, Esther and Owen, who are both 91. But it was something she knew she had to do for herself.
“My dad has dementia and my mom's not really doing well,” she says. “I moved them into a house up the street from me in Los Angeles, and so when this opportunity came along the first thing I considered was: ‘Can I leave and what does that look like?’
© Valentin Le CronOh my god, I'm so single. I go through life with an open heart and I would never say never, but I don't date. I don't go on dates, I don't look to go on dates.
“My dad doesn't necessarily recall our conversations, because his short-term memory is quite challenged by the disease. But my mom does, and I know they want me to live my life.”
As Teri is talking about her parents, she becomes emotional and starts to cry, but continues: “I can't stop living my life because I have to take care of my parents, but it's hard. Yet it's kind of a beautiful thing that this opportunity was put in front of me as it's forcing me to look at a lot of things – like when we choose to put ourselves first, even when that feels difficult, and rising to confront our own fears that we're not good enough, or we can't do something.
“I feel like, on so many levels, this is also creating a beautiful evolution within my own spiritualness, which I think I needed as a 61-year-old woman. I'm grateful and I'm excited.”
She has been working with professional caregivers for her parents over the past few months ahead of leaving, and says that her friends will also step in and help if necessary.
“Thank god for FaceTime,” she says. “I would love nothing more if there was a way to get them over to London, but I think it's probably just too complicated.”
One loved one who will be making the journey across the pond with her, though, is her adored Scottish Fold cat, Fig. “By the way, that should be a movie in itself – just getting an American cat to England is a lot of work,” she jokes. “She's getting all ready to be a British cat.”
Teri, too, has been getting ready for her new role, getting in touch with Vanessa as well as Matt Henry, who plays Miranda’s colleague Nigel – famously played by Stanley Tucci in the films. “I obviously go way back with Vanessa [who appeared in seasons seven and eight of Desperate Housewives], so she and I have communicated about it and she's been unbelievably supportive,” Teri says. “Vanessa was supportive in terms of saying to the producers, ‘You'll love her, she's great, she works so hard’, and she's encouraging me to make it my own and have a great time. She’s also going to tell me where to go to get things done while I’m in London.”
Whether or not Vanessa will share tips on dating in the UK is not known; since Teri’s marriage to the actor Jon Tenney – with whom she welcomed Emerson – came to an end in 2003, she has been linked to stars including Ryan Seacrest and David Spade, but has not had a significant partner for some time.
“Oh my god, I'm so single,” she says when HELLO! asks her about her romantic life. “I go through life with an open heart and I would never say never, but I don't date. I don't go on dates, I don't look to go on dates.
“I haven't been on a date in... I don't think I'm exaggerating if I say seven years. I have such a giant community of beautiful friends and most of my girlfriends who are my age I've known for at least 30 years, and they're mostly married. There really isn't a new source of people. Sometimes if I go to a charity event, I'll think, ‘Oh, maybe I'll meet a like-minded person that cares about curing cancer’, but I don't.
© Valentin Le Cron“I'm open to it. I go every year to this festival in Napa Valley called Bottle Rock, which is like Coachella for grown-ups who like wine. I had a friend of mine there that brought along a guy she thought I might be interested in and I gave him my number, but he never called. And that was as close as I got.”
When asked if she would consider dating a British man while she is working in London, she says: “The last person I seriously dated, which was only six months, was British… But I'm not going to view an entire nation with this one guy's attitude...”
Still, performing in the West End has been a long-held dream for the actress, who passed up the opportunity to take her touring role as Sally Bowles in Cabaret to Broadway in 1999, when Emerson was just a baby.
“I was still breastfeeding and doing eight shows a week. I just thought, ‘I can't do this any more’,” she says of that time. “I don't really believe in regrets, but if I had one, maybe that would be it. It would be amazing to be on Broadway and – knock on wood – I'll look forward to that in some capacity in my future.
© Valentin Le Cron“But I look at the West End as an equal to that. It's the highlight of theatre in England and it’s such an honour to be part of that community.”
Teri admits that she feels both excited and nervous to take on The Devil Wears Prada. One of her most nerve-wracking moments came when she had to record a song to be sent to Sir Elton John – who wrote the music for the production – so he could approve her casting.
“I was just imagining, ‘OK, Elton John is sitting in his house right now listening to me sing this song,” she laughs.
In recent weeks, she has been working with the vocal coach Eric Vetro, who has previously trained famous names like Ariana Grande and who she used previously when prepping for previous theatre roles, including Morticia Addams in The Addams Family in 2022. She has also been going through the script while walking on her treadmill and keeping up her physical strength through yoga and strength training, which she has been doing for a long time. “I walk on the treadmill and go through the script and that takes me about up to two hours,” she says. “I have been doing strength training for a long time and I do yoga, so I'll be looking for yoga classes in London.
I feel like I'm usually in pretty good shape normally, so I am really concentrating on the vocal work.”
In keeping with HELLO!’s Second Act theme of celebrating women in midlife and beyond, Teri says that as she and her contemporaries get older she “really understands and relates to all women, in terms of the arc that you have to go through and the strength that you have to rediscover”.
She adds that, while showbusiness is a notoriously tough place for women as they mature, she is still striving to do good work. “There's plenty of women over 50 and 60 who are doing some incredible work in television and I feel like I'm not done with that part of my story.
“I've never been a person who thinks of herself as a victim. I think: ‘If you don't really want to hire people who are 60, then I'm just going to have to find a really great story that has a 60-year-old in it and I'm going to write it myself.’ I'm just not a person who gives up.”
Something else which stood the test of time is Desperate Housewives, which is now streaming on Disney+ and has found a resurgence of popularity with the younger generation.
“I think that's so crazy,” she says. “I think it's because the show really rode – for the most part successfully – this tightrope of surrealistic, kind of comedic, observation, but rooted in very grounded, relatable human feelings like ‘I'm jealous’, ‘Nobody loves me’ or ‘I feel lonely’, ‘I'm working too much’ – things that haven't changed in 25 years.”
Teri, Emerson and Andrea Bowen, her former on-screen daughter, are helping to stoke the popularity with their podcast Desperately Devoted, which sees the trio rewatch episodes of the show; the podcast recently earned a video-streaming deal.
“We have the best time together, there's just such genuine love and respect,” she says of working with her daughter. “She's my favourite person in the world, and if I could I'd be with her every minute of every day, but that's not healthy and that's not what she would want.”
She recalls a recent incident where Emerson made her cry with her thoughtfulness. “She came to me last week and said she had bought a return ticket to London to see me from 19 December until 6 January. I was like, ‘You’re going to spend Christmas with me?’ I also think she's going to come to London for a couple of days for my first performance.”
© Valentin Le Cron“My friends say that this time in my life is like the thawing of Teri Hatcher, which I sort of love. I don’t know if I put myself in the freezer, or my parents or the industry put me in the freezer, but whoever put me in there, I'm coming out."
Teri will be starring in The Devil Wears Prada for four months; after that, she plans to return to Los Angeles, where she is going to be hosting a new TV crime show while also pitching ideas of her own to networks. One of them involves her former Desperate Housewives on-screen husband, James Denton.
“I'm out pitching a food competition show that James and I would be the hosts of. I would love for it to sell because I think people would love it, as it has the energy of The Great British Bake Off.
“I would love to be back on TV and I don't know what that looks like. I love comedy too; I have all these things in the fire, so I think Devil Wears Prada is just the beginning.”
What does she do in her spare time? Her social media fans know she loves entertaining people at home, pulling out all the stops to host people for get-togethers over Christmas and other holidays.
“I am a big believer in experiences over things,” she says. “I cook, I have friends over. Tuc Watkins from Desperate Housewives [who played Bob Hunter] is a friend of mine and we go back and forth between hosting poker nights.”
Her greatest joy in life is entertaining people. “My friends say that this time in my life is like the thawing of Teri Hatcher, which I sort of love. I don’t know if I put myself in the freezer, or my parents or the industry put me in the freezer, but whoever put me in there, I'm coming out.
“I want to bring joy to the audience. And I hope everybody comes [to The Devil Wears Prada] and has the best time.”
Teri Hatcher will be joining The Devil Wears Prada The Musical from 20 October 2026 with the production running at the Dominion Theatre until 25 September 2027. To book tickets please go to www.devilwearspradamusical.com
