Legally Blonde is unquestionably one of the best movies of the 2000s thanks to Reese Witherspoon's hilarious performance as Elle Woods and all its quotable moments. Since it’s become an iconic movie, we’ve seen a sequel and musical adaptation, and now a prequel series is being made. With the search on for the teen Elle Woods, Witherspoon has shared the origin of the upcoming streaming show, and Jenna Ortega actually has something to do with it.
Reese Witherspoon has teamed up with Will Ferrell for a new comedy called You’re Cordially Invited. While promoting the new movie that fans can watch with an Amazon Prime subscription starting Friday, she said this about the Elle TV show:
I saw that Wednesday Addams show, you know the one, and I was like ‘Oh, she was in high school’ and I loved it. I watched every episode. I thought it was amazing, and I was like ‘We should do Elle Woods in high school’ because I wanted to see who she was before college, before law school and I started having all these ideas. And these amazing writers came up with a great pitch, and now Amazon is making the show, and it’s called Elle. And now, I have to pick a girl to play a young me.
Netflix’s Wednesday was a massive phenomenon when Season 1 came out in 2022. To this day, the series remains the most-watched debut for a Netflix original TV show. When Reese Witherspoon was on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, she even shared that watching the series inspired her to imagine Elle Woods in high school and want to build a new project around it.
The series will have Elle Woods rocking pink and acing her classes in the 1990s. Elle’s showrunner is Laura Kittrell, who produced over 30 episodes of Insecure, and Witherspoon is producing the series under her Hello Sunshine production team. Currently, the show is trying to cast the younger Elle Woods. Witherspoon shared her reaction to watching audition tapes for the star of Elle with these words:
These girls. I just love them all so much, and they’re doing such a good job. And now it’s different because we used to audition and we’d go into a casting office, and now they have to shoot, produce, and do all the costumes. They have to put together videos that are basically like a mini-movie, but they are killing it and now I have a really hard decision.
Sounds like there’s a lot of competition out there when it comes to finding the next Elle Woods, and I bet they had a similar good problem while casting Wednesday too. Of course, much of the internet has turned to Witherspoon’s lookalike daughter when fan-casting, but it sounds like she is really trying to exhaust every option and is going to have a hard time choosing her successor.
The Big Little Lies star said she’s watched “so many” audition tapes already, and it’s been “so fun” to see all the young talent out there. When the actress was up for Legally Blonde, she apparently had tight competition with her talented peers like Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alicia Silverstone, Katherine Heigl, Milla Jovovich, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Christina Applegate all reportedly in consideration for the role.
It’s tough to imagine who will follow Reese Witherspoon given her amazing legacy as Elle Woods, but if anyone is going to find the next Elle Woods, it’s her! And I'm sure that whoever lands the role will be perfect, just like how Jenna Ortega was the perfect successor for Christina Ricci.
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