The Devil Wears Prada 2 doesn’t arrive in theaters until May 1, 2026, but some moments between stars Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep are already online, thanks to paparazzi and fan videos shot on the streets of New York.

Onlookers have captured scenes of Hathaway’s Andy Sachs running down New York sidewalks and Streep’s Miranda Priestly ascending the Met steps from a distance. Others have gotten so close that actual dialogue from the movie can be heard.

For the filmmakers behind Prada, dealing with paparazzi and fans can clearly be an unwelcome distraction.

In videos posted on Aug. 20, Hathaway and star Stanley Tucci can be seen asking paparazzi to “relax” and step back while filming a scene in Central Park.)

The sequel Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) was a particular challenge for Koskoff, who recalls “frenzy” after adding paparazzi magnet Lady Gaga to the cast.

Prada is the latest in a string of films and TV shows where crowds have gathered to capture filming as it happens.

Two years ago, there was Blake Lively’s It Ends With Us in New Jersey, then there was the latest season of …And Just Like That in New York, and currently, there’s Tom Holland’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day in the U.K.

“Many filmmakers welcome me, because they realize good publicity early in is helpful,” says Steve Sands, one of New York’s more well-known paparazzo.

Even if that’s the case some of the time, savvy filmmakers choose to get ahead of leaked photos, sharing their own, high-quality images from set so that they can control the first look of their film. Joker filmmaker Phillips did that in 2018 and 2022, posting photos of his lead stars in costume on his Instagram account.

The recent Denzel Washington-Spike Lee movie Highest 2 Lowest, for instance, didn’t have much trouble when it filmed in Brooklyn, while even in the heyday of filming in Los Angeles, you didn’t see extensive paparazzi shots from set.

This could partly be due to New York being a walkable city while L.A. is car-centric, or because much filming in L.A. was done on studio lots. But it could also be due to New York’s lack of anti-paparazzi laws.

California has enacted legislation targeting unwanted intrusion, harassment and trespassing by paparazzi, though the First Amendment clearly protects filming on public streets.

Koskoff wants New York to pass similar legislation to help guard against aggressive tactics.

“They need to put something into place that protects the filmmakers and the hundreds of millions of dollars that we bring into that city to shoot,” she says. “They should be helping us protect the product that we’re spending a fortune in that city to produce and create.”