There’s a new prequel in town, and her name is Elle. It is not a prequel to Paul Verhoeven’s 2016 film of the same name, to the dismay of anyone hoping for a psychosexual thriller summer. It is the long-teased prequel to the 2001 film Legally Blonde, set during future Harvard grad Elle Woods’ high school years. In February, the series cast newcomer Lexi Minetree in the lead role, and today, producer and original star Reese Witherspoon shared photographic evidence of Minetree in the role.
“Harvard was hard. High School was harder. Our new series, Elle, is now in production!” Witherspoon wrote on Instagram along with an image of Minetree wearing pink and talking on the phone, two things Elle Woods circa 1996 certainly would be likely to do.
Image courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios
The timeline of when this series might actually arrive is unclear, but the image would suggest that they are at least into filming. Last week, Deadline reported that Elle’s parents Wyatt and Eva had been cast, hiring Tom Everett Scott and June Diane Raphael in the roles, respectively.
The series “follows Elle Woods in high school as we learn about the life experiences that shaped her into the iconic young woman we came to know and love in the first ‘Legally Blonde’ film,” per its official logline. Of course, the original film posits that before Elle followed her ex-boyfriend Warner to Harvard, she was a naive and shallow, if very bright, girl from Southern California in the mid-90s. Elle’s character development happens at law school—before that, she was clueless, pun fully intended.
