The “Mamma Mia” actress also praised her “Devil Wears Prada” costar Emily Blunt, who was also honored with a star at the ceremony: “I feel like I birthed you.”

Meryl Streep honors ‘bitchy’ Stanley Tucci and his ‘formidable’ heterosexuality at Walk of Fame ceremony

The "Mamma Mia" actress also praised her "Devil Wears Prada" costar Emily Blunt, who was also honored with a star at the ceremony: "I feel like I birthed you."

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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April 30, 2026 4:36 p.m. ET

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Stanley Tucci and Meryl Streep in Los Angeles on April 30, 2026. Credit:

Kevin Winter/Getty

- Meryl Streep praised Stanley Tucci as "urbane, sly, funny, bitchy, and generous" at his Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony.

- Streep also complimented her *Devil Wears Prada* costar's "undeniable heterosexuality, which is formidable."

- The actress also spoke about Emily Blunt, who was also honored with a star at the ceremony: "I feel like I birthed you."

Meryl Streep is paying tribute to one of her cattiest collaborators.

The *Bridges of Madison County* actress waxed poetic about Stanley Tucci at the actor's Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, and also honored their *Devil Wears Prada* costar Emily Blunt in Los Angeles on Thursday.

"You can't even call Stanley a national treasure anymore because I've just been around the world and truly the affection hurled at him globally, he's just marinating in it," Streep said at the ceremony, which comes in the midst of a long international press tour promoting *The Devil Wears Prada 2*. "And it's impossible not to love Stanley Tucci. Urbane, sly, funny, bitchy, and generous and curious and so elegant."

Streep went on to compliment Tucci's style and, uh, sexuality. "Stanley has an elegance to his heterosexuality. His *undeniable* heterosexuality, which is formidable," she said. "Not that heterosexuality is better than any other kind of sexuality. It's just that elegance — real, unforced, natural, unstyled elegance is sometimes harder for straight men."

As Streep addressed a crowd that also included Dwayne Johnson, Matt Damon, and Robert Downey Jr., she added, "I'm not looking at anybody here, or intending any slight."

Streep first worked with Tucci in 2006's *The Devil Wears Prada*, which saw the actor play Nigel Kipling, the right hand to the three-time Oscar winner's magazine executive Miranda Priestley. The duo later played husband and wife in Nora Ephron's 2009 Julia Child biopic *Julie & Julia*.

"His soulfulness is evident in the most elevated characters and also in the lowdown characters," Streep said in her remarks. "It's a thing he can't lose, no matter if it's a priest or a prosecutor or a pervert or Puck or Paul Child, he always finds something true and surprising in every man that he plays. He transforms character acting into leading man material."

Tucci and Streep in 'Julie & Julia'.

Jonathan Wenk/Columbia

Streep went on to praise Tucci's prickliness. "Your elegance and delight in just being alive is also evident when you're shaking a cocktail or rustling up dinner, but especially when you're complaining," she said. "A special relish. Stanley can really muster up a mighty grievance. Rivaling the great Nora Ephron, also right up there, and me, the world's biggest whiner, which Disney can attest to. I can't even hope to compete with him."

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The *Doubt* actress also recognized Tucci's unique career trajectory. "He's created something really unique in our world as an actor, director, writer, producer, chef, curator, tour guide, entrepreneur, and designer. I mean, who else has done this in our business?" she said. "There's nobody in the world who has done what he has done. It's astonishing, and I am in awe. And he has, like, I don't know, eight children, right? That alone, I wanna lie down."

Streep concluded, "I've known you longer as a friend than as a scene partner, and we've been through some rough times together and some great times, and I love you deeply, and I've adored working with Stanley. I've done it often. And I am ready to go again, as the actress said to the bishop. Whenever you raise your elegant little finger. Love you, Stanley."

Tucci responded to Streep's speech at the end of the ceremony. "Meryl, thank you so much for those incredibly kind things you've said. More than kind," he said. "I saw Meryl first in a play at the public theatre when I had first moved to New York. *Alice in Concert*, and I completely fell in love with her, and then of course have seen movies and all that. And I never thought that I would, first of all, work with her, but to be here today and have her say those things about me is probably the greatest honor I've ever had."

Tucci and Streep in 'The Devil Wears Prada'.

Barry Wetcher/Fox

Tucci also joked about his long career in the entertainment industry. "It has been an honor and absolutely exhausting to be a part of Hollywood for 45 years. But I wouldn't have traded it for the world," he said. "It really is a great honor for me having come to Hollywood so many years ago between the wars. And the fact that I end up on the sidewalk is appropriate. It's happened before, but I recovered."

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Earlier in the ceremony, Streep also briefly addressed Blunt, whom she worked with on both *Devil Wears Prada* movies as well as *Into the Woods* and *Mary Poppins Returns*.

"God, Emily, I feel like I birthed you, really," she said. "I'm so proud of you. And everything the fellas said is absolutely true. I can't wait to work with you again. And the best thing about you getting this [Walk of Fame honor] at such a tender age is that we'll have you to kick around for at least 35 years, if my career is any evidence. I'm in love with you, just like everybody else."

Dwayne Johnson, Robert Downey Jr., Tucci, Emily Blunt, Streep, and Matt Damon in Los Angeles on April 30, 2026.

Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty

Blunt later expressed her appreciation for Streep as well as her former costars Damon, Downey, and Johnson, who all praised her in previous remarks at the ceremony.

"It's very difficult to sum up just how meaningful this is to me and the juggernauts that showed up to speak about me has just blown my hair back," Blunt said. "You guys, and the great loves of my life who are all here, have made life such a deep privilege. And this world and this playground that we get to experience such a great privilege."

Blunt — whose sister Felicity has been married to Tucci since 2012 — continued, "I'm so honored to share it with the Tucc. We spend far too much time together, and now we're gonna spend even more time together as people trample over us."

You can watch the full Walk of Fame ceremony above.

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