“Was I Emily?”

I had less than 24 hours to secure a private plane. To fly ten people. To a secluded island. For a three-day photoshoot.

A truckload of designer clothes and accessories worth millions was sitting in my vehicle—all of it had to remain in pristine condition through transit, through the shoot, and back. I had spent the past week calling practically every private airline in the Philippines, emailing CEOs, explaining why our publication merited this request—flying us there for not a single centavo, letting us pay in our currency instead: a magazine feature. I had secured a yacht as backup and exhausted every other possible means of transport. But none of it was a real option. Adding several days of travel time made it a non-option. My fellow writers, of course, tried to help me with suggestions in my desperation: “What if we just take a ro-ro?” “My god, not with the Louis Vuittons!”

I was 21 years old. A few months into my first job in publishing.

The outfits had been pre-styled. The models were booked. The glam team was set. The photographer was ready. My editors had put all their faith in me to produce the plane. Everyone believed we were leaving tomorrow. Nobody was asking questions because nobody thought there was a reason to. I had learned early that in this industry, you don’t surface the problem—you solve it, and you do it before anyone notices there was one to begin with.

I was terrified. But I had gotten very good at not looking it.

It was a day straight out of that movie.

The Devil Wears Prada premiered a few months later. Watching it, I thought: Was my boss Miranda? It’s wild how deeply the film resonated—with me, with practically everyone on our team—even as Andy navigated New York and we were living our own version of it, in Manila.

And Manila in that era deserved its own film, honestly. Philippine publishing was in its golden age. The mastheads were real, the shoots were ambitious, the industry had genuine prestige and momentum. We weren’t operating in the shadow of something more legitimate—we were legitimate. What we didn’t have was the budget. The Conde infrastructure. The decades of institutional access that meant a phone call opened doors that, for us, required a week of emails and a compelling pitch about the value of ink on paper. We had to argue for things that our New York counterparts simply inherited. And we did—creatively, relentlessly, with a resourcefulness that I’ve come to think of as its own kind of excellence.

We just had to work harder to be taken at our word. That’s not the same thing as not belonging.

At the time, I hated the film’s ending. How could Andy walk away at the peak? Not after Paris. Not after earning Miranda’s nod. That was the job a million girls would kill for. We couldn’t root for her— not completely. So we decided, with the certainty only the very young and very passionate can muster, that the true hero of the film was Emily. The one who dreamed it, loved it, lived it. The one who stayed.

I still believe that. I’ve long since made peace with the fact that I am Emily.

Not as a cautionary tale. Not as the girl who couldn’t let go. But as someone who looked at this industry—its impossible asks, its unreasonable hours, its spectacular indifference to your personal heroics—and chose it anyway. Chose it with full information. Chose it because the alternative, walking away from something you love because it’s hard, has never made sense to me.

Passion in this industry is not a bonus. It is the whole thing. It is what makes writers write past midnight and editors fight for the shot no one else believes in. It is what turns an impossible ask into a problem you simply refuse to let win. It is irrational, inconvenient, and in this work, entirely necessary. It doesn’t guarantee you anything. But without it, nothing else holds.

I wonder what the sequel will do with all of this. Whether Andy, two decades on, will look back and feel the loss of what she left—or the relief. Whether the film will finally ask the question it was always circling: not was it worth it, but worth it to whom, and on whose terms?

A few hours after the longest day of my 21-year-old life, my phone rang.

“We can provide the plane and pilot to take your team to and from the island.”

I don’t have adequate words for what I felt. Only that I had never been so simultaneously relieved and alive. I had done it—through sheer refusal to accept that I couldn’t.

I told my boss. There were no congratulations. No fanfare. It was, as far as my editor was concerned, just another day.

For the next five years, it pretty much was. We made things happen. Impossible things, regularly, quietly, many times without ceremony. Of course, we had fun. That was the point. We enjoyed every single moment. And I loved it—I want to be honest about that. Even in the hardest days, I loved it.

Here is the thing I’ve carried since, the thing that took me years and a team of my own to fully understand: the passion was real, the work was worthy, and it would have cost nothing to say so. A Miranda boss was perhaps thrilling to mythologize on film. Miranda, like my boss, above all else, is a genius. And there is something real in that—the magnetism of working for someone whose standards are so exacting they reshape you, whose brilliance pulls the best work out of you almost against your will. And I am who I am, in no small part, because of it. To this day, I look back with gratitude.

In real life, in real newsrooms, with real people who are burning themselves down to make beautiful things happen, however, that style could also sometimes leave a mark. I know this now because I’ve sat on the other side of the desk. Because I’ve watched talented people shrink under the weight of not being told they were doing great. Because I’ve made it a point,  deliberately, consciously, to be the kind of leader who says well done and means it, who understands that acknowledgment isn’t weakness. It’s what keeps the passion alive in someone else.