Wanted: Movie ingenue with great sense of humour, earthy sensuality and Hollywood heat, filled with youthful vigour yet old-fashioned movie virtues, for a comedy of manners set in New York's upper East Side child-rearing and society-lunching world. Send resume care of The Nanny Diaries. Scarlett Johansson look-alike a plus. 

No, directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini didn't place ads like that to find a star for their adaptation of Emma Laughlin and Nicola Kraus' 2002 best seller, the title of which quickly became shorthand for contempt for the lifestyle of the rich and child-ed.