Reese Witherspoon Is Currently Watching Audition Tapes for Teen Elle Woods for ‘Legally Blonde’ Prequel Series
Reese Witherspoon is on the hunt for the perfect teenage Elle Woods.
The actress, who originated the role in the 2001 movie Legally Blonde and its 2003 sequel, recently shared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that she now has “to pick a girl to play the young me” in the Prime Video prequel series, Elle.
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Witherspoon said “it’s so fun to watch” all the audition tapes, adding, “I just love them all so much and they’re doing such a good job.”
However, it also reminded her of how different the casting process is in this day and age, compared to when she first auditioned for Legally Blonde.
“Now it’s different because we used to audition and we’d go into a casting office,” the You’re Cordially Invited actress explained. “Now they have to shoot, produce, do all the costumes [for auditions]. They have to put together videos that are basically like a mini movie. It’s crazy!”
Witherspoon added that all the actresses auditioning are “killing it,” which is going to make it a “really hard decision.”
Elle, which is also executive produced by Witherspoon via her Hello Sunshine banner, will tell the origin story of Elle Woods as a 1990s high schooler. Series creator and showrunner Laura Kittrell is also executive producing, along with Hello Sunshine’s Lauren Neustadter and Lauren Kisilevsky, and Marc Platt, producer of the Legally Blonde films.
Elsewhere during her conversation with host Jimmy Fallon, the Your Place or Mine star revealed she first came up with the idea for a prequel series after watching Netflix’s Wednesday, starring Jenna Ortega.
“I saw that Wednesday Addams show and I was like, ‘Oh, she was in high school.’ I loved it. I watched every episode. I thought it was amazing,” Witherspoon said. “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.”
A release date has yet to be announced for Elle.
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