The Nanny Diaries tells the story of the emotional and often humorous journey of Annie Braddock (Scarlett Johansson), a young woman from a working-class neighborhood in New Jersey, struggling to understand her place in the world. Fresh out of college, she gets tremendous pressure from her nurse mother to find a respectable position in the business world although Annie would prefer to trade in her blackberry for an anthropologist's field diary. Through a serendipitous meeting, Annie ends up in the elite and ritualistic culture of Manhattan's Upper East Side - as remote from Annie's suburban New Jersey upbringing as life in an Amazon tribal village. Choosing to duck out of real life, Annie accepts the position as a nanny for a wealthy family, referred to as simply "the X's." She quickly learns that life is not very rosy on the other side of the tax bracket, as she must cater to the every whim of Mrs. X (Laura Linney) and her precocious son Grayer, while attempting to avoid the formidable Mr. X (Paul Giamatti). Life becomes even more complicated when Annie falls for a gorgeous neighbor of the X's (Chris Evans) who she nicknames Harvard Hottie, and is forced to explore what she wants to do with her life.

• Changed release dates twice before settling to August 24, 2007. The initial release date was for April.

• Differences between the novel and film:
- Scarlett's character is called 'Nan' in the novel. In the film she is named 'Annie'.
- Annie narrates the story the entire time through voice-over.
- Alicia Keys plays Annie's best friend Lynette, a character that is not in the book.
- Before she moves in with the X's, Annie lives in New Jersey with her single mother, Judy, who is a nurse.
- In the script, Annie does not attend college. She has just graduated from college.
- Annie does not tell her mother she is a nanny - she tells her that she works for a big banking company and that she lives with Lynette.
- The ending is completely different than the book.
Source: IMDb

• "For Annie, New York is just a hop across the Hudson River; it's not like she's from a small farming community in the Midwest, wide-eyed at these stunning material things. She reads fashion magazines, and is aware of this world. I didn't want it to seem like she's coming from complete innocence, didn't want her to seem dewy-eyed. She's sort of amused by all this extravagance, and sort of loves living, briefly, in this lap of luxury. But there's another aspect, which is the women Annie meets who are also caretakers," she adds, "who are really touching characters and who show a different side to this life. And in showing all these sides, the movie is a real love letter to New York. I hope that comes across."

• "People outside the city can get a sense of this part of it. Like with many Woody Allen films, even if you're not familiar with the city, or have never visited it, you see a certain lifestyle in Nanny Diaries from a very personal perspective."

• "It was wonderful to shoot in New York of course, being a New Yorker. The directors were also New Yorkers, [Shari Springer] Berman and [Robert] Pulcini who are just fantastic New York filmmakers and documentarians. It was all New York based crew and it was wonderful to shoot there. I think that it's going to be great. I loved American Splendor. They of course wrote the script and they're wonderful writers. They're a husband and wife team and it was amazing to work with them and I think that it's going to be great. So we'll see. Hopefully. We had to compromise a little bit for the cinematic ending and so forth, but it's true to the book and the authors I think were just thrilled."

• "I loved working with Paul. He's such a great guy, very interesting and funny, and I found that we got along right off the bat. Seeing him and Bob Pulcini together is very scary actually. But there is a certain cynicism and sarcasm and a darkness about Paul, and his sense of humor that I can completely relate to and I admire because he is incredibly clever and very funny. He is also an amazing dramatic actor and he plays a real horrible guy in The Nanny Diaries. He's so serious and awful and Paul couldn't be more completely opposite."
(on working with Paul Giamatti)

• Shari Springer Berman (director) on Scarlett
"Scarlett clearly had the observations of an outsider who had been there, and that's what Annie is in the movie. And she nails it."

• "Why won't you shake your booty?"

• "My desire to be an observer of life was actually keeping me from having one."

• "AHA! Okay lady, I will give you nanny's gone wild!"

• "Heads up, lady! Try smiling once in a while! People hate you!"