The search for the next Elle Woods concludes, sans reality show
Newcomer Lexi Minetree has been selected to star in the new Legally Blonde prequel.
Screenshot: Amazon MGM Studios/YouTube
Once, the search for Elle Woods was deemed so important it got its own reality competition program on MTV. This time around, the search was much quieter. “After watching so many incredible auditions for the new Elle prequel series on @PrimeVideo, we finally found our Elle,” executive producer (and OG Elle) Reese Witherspoon wrote on Instagram. The post is accompanied by a video of her sharing the good news with newcomer Lexi Minetree, who cried and called her mom. Minetree will play the lead in the Legally Blonde prequel series, appropriately titled Elle. It’s her first time leading a series; she previously appeared on Law & Order: SVU and TV movies like Lifetime’s The Paramedic Who Stalked Me.
Amazon Prime Video’s Elle is set to follow our protagonist “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.” The concept of this prequel has prompted some bemusement online, not only because we’re all a little sick of spin-offs but also because a Legally Blonde prequel, specifically, doesn’t seem that interesting. After all, the point of Legally Blonde is that the character was shallow, spoiled, and careless before her breakup motivated her to buckle down and succeed at Harvard Law. This prequel won’t even include her sorority sisters, which served in the film as the charming reminder of her previous life.
That said, this sort of thing has been done before—see: the CW’s Sex And The City prequel series The Carrie Diaries. Like Elle, young Carrie (AnnaSophia Robb) was a blonde fashionista who was kind of too fabulous for high school. That show only lasted two scant seasons, so it is perhaps not the best precedent. But hey, teen TV has always had room for bright, plucky heroines, so maybe it’ll work out for Minetree.
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