Reese Witherspoon reveals why it was time to bring 'feminist' Legally Blonde character back
While Reese isn’t coming back as Elle Woods herself, she thought it was important to bring back the iconic heroine
Reese Witherspoon stopped by The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon recently, and immediately had fans thinking they’d stepped back in time.
Clad in a pink slip dress with the quirkiest, fluffiest heels, Reese - now 49 - looked practically unchanged from the first time she introduced us to Elle Woods, the beloved protagonist of the Legally Blonde franchise.
Reese’s nod to the pink-loving blonde legal eagle wasn’t a coincidence - she was there in her capacity as producer of the upcoming prequel series, Elle. And she revealed why now was the right time to bring back Elle in a new capacity, at a time when "young girls need a better role model".
Speaking about the prequel series - which will star a new actress playing a younger Elle Woods who’s still in high school - Reese shared, "I just thought, why not start and make her a character for young women nowadays?"
"I looked at what's going on with young girls, and I just think they need a better role model. So it was time to bring Elle Woods back."
Praising the enduring legacy of the character and the films, which first came out more than 25 years ago, Reese declared, "It's an iconic character. It's really a feminist character."
"She thinks it's about this guy and following him to college, but it's really a story of being an underdog and a fish out of water in a place where she doesn't feel welcome."
"I think everybody has that feeling at one point in their lives."
Just before Reese’s appearance on Jimmy Fallon, she reunited with several cast members of the original movie for a celebration in New York dubbed ‘Elle World’.
Reese, along with Jennifer Coolidge, Selma Blair, Ali Larter and Victor Garber attended a talk in celebration of the movie - and the upcoming prequel series.
At the event, Reese shared, "Playing this character for 25 years has been the privilege of my life, just because people come up to me and they tell me stories about how they go to law school because of her or they named their daughter Elle.
"She went through this experience of feeling like everybody was looking down on her or judged her, and I don’t know a person on earth who hasn’t felt like an underdog in some situation."
Newcomer Lexi Minetree will take over the role in the prequel series, which follows Elle in 1995 as she navigates high school in her Seattle hometown. The show starts streaming July 1 on Prime Video.
