Lexi Minetree steps into role made famous by Reese Witherspoon in new New Prime Video Elle Woods origin story series Elle
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The world first fell in love with Elle Woods, the hyper-feminine and fiercely smart protagonist of the Legally Blonde movie, back in 2001.
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Played by Reese Witherspoon, Elle was a bubbly California sorority girl who defied stereotypes with a smile and graduated at the top of her Harvard Law class, proving intelligence and femininity can indeed go together.
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The pop-culture icon, who was also the focus of the 2003 sequel Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, is now getting the prequel treatment in the new Prime Video TV series Elle, which hits the streamer on July 1.
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The Vancouver-shot show — Season 2 just wrapped shooting in the city — is not your straightforward sitcom. It’s more like a really good young-adult novel that both teens and adults would enjoy.
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Sun Spots
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The storyline is set in 1995 and Elle (Lexi Minetree), who just celebrated her sweet 16 with a big and, of course, very pink birthday party at her family’s mansion in Bel-Air, is told by her parents Eva (June Diane Raphael) and Wyatt (Tom Everett Scott) that, due to an issue with Wyatt’s job (no spoilers here), the family is moving to Seattle.
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Elle is, not surprisingly, upset by the news.
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“It’s Seattle grunge. It’s the opposite of everything that she understands,” showrunner and writer Laura Kittrell said at a press event during the shooting of the first season. “We always talked about this motif of her being the lone pink figure in a sea of grey and flannel.”
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Once in her new school (a.k.a. North Vancouver’s St. Thomas Aquinas Regional Secondary School), Elle soon discovers that her sunny Californian attitude and sartorial choices make her very much a bright, shiny fish out of water. Senior mean girl Kimberley (Chandler Kinney) is particularly tough on her, as is evident when she stops Elle in the hallway and sneeringly comments on the bedazzled — complete with red hearts for eyes — Nirvana smiley face T-shirt Elle has customized in a bid to fit in.
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“People are saying that you wearing that shirt is the second worst thing that has ever happened to Nirvana,” says Kimberley, giving a nod to Nirvana’s frontman Kurt Cobain’s death the year before.
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For Kittrell and fellow showrunner Caroline Dries, who were both teens in the 1990s, creating Elle’s mostly analogue origin story meant they got to put Elle in a lot of uncharted water.
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“What was her first fish-out-of-water moment? What was her first crush? What was her first friendship breakup?” said Kittrell. “For us, just the idea of high school allowed us to explore that. And, what’s fun about high school in the ’90s, is there were really no cellphones, at least on our show.”
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No text messaging and limited email meant conversations happened face-to-face.
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“I went to high school in the ’90s. I was the same age as Elle, and I just remember how scary it was to ask somebody to a dance in person or on the phone,” said Kittrell. “So just getting to relive those memories for us was so fun.”
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Elle marks Minetree’s biggest job to date. The USC theatre school grad, who has appeared in episodes of Law & Order: SVU, The Murdaugh Murders, and Crowdsource Murder, landed the job after an open casting call that resulted in thousands of audition tapes sent to casting.
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Minetree’s tape stood out not just because she nailed the audition but for the extra effort she put into what’s called the slate portion, where the actor introduces themselves and offers pertinent information. For her slate, Minetree mimicked Elle’s “why I belong at Harvard” application video from the film.
