Reese Witherspoon Announces ‘Legally Blonde’ Prequel Series by Doing Elle Woods’ Iconic Bend and Snap

Reese Witherspoon launched a new era of Legally Blonde while paying homage to one of the original film’s most iconic scenes.

The actress, 48, took to the stage at Amazon Prime Video’s upfront presentation on Tuesday, May 14, to announce that an Elle Woods-centered prequel series was in the works at the streamer. One of her fellow presenters dropped a pen while asking for an autograph during the announcement, which Witherspoon proceeded to pick up with style.

“I got it, because when you get nervous in front of a really big group of people that you’re trying to impress, all you have to do is bend and snap,” she said while doing the bend and snap flirting technique from 2001’s Legally Blonde, per event footage shared via X by Variety.

Witherspoon went on to share details about the upcoming show, which is currently titled Elle. “I had this crazy idea that the world might want to know the origin story of Elle Woods,” she explained. “So, here I am to officially tell you the most amazing news ever, which is that we’re going back to high school with Elle.”

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Witherspoon, who sported an all-pink ensemble and was joined onstage by Elle’s famous pooch, Bruiser, continued: “Before she became the most famous Gemini vegetarian to graduate from Harvard Law School, she was just a regular ‘90s high school girl. And thanks to Amazon and Hello Sunshine, all of you are going to get to know her in this new series on Amazon Prime Video. I’m so excited.”

Witherspoon will serve as an executive producer on the show along with Lauren Kisilevsky, Marc Platt and Lauren Neustadter. Series creator Laura Kittrell will work triple duty as an executive producer and showrunner. Amazon MGM Studios will also produce the project. It is unknown who will take on the role of young Elle and if Witherspoon will appear on the show.

News broke last month that a TV show set within the Legally Blonde universe was in the works at Prime Video, produced by Witherspoon and her production company, Hello Sunshine. Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, known for their work on The O.C. and Gossip Girl, were also reportedly tapped to produce in addition to penning the series’ script, per Variety.

The original Legally Blonde film followed Witherspoon as Elle Woods, a California sorority girl who applies to Harvard Law School in hopes of winning back her ex-boyfriend, Warner (Matthew Davis). Along the way, she subverts other people’s and her own expectations by proving there is more to her than meets the eye.

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The now-iconic film spawned a 2003 sequel, titled Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, a 2007 Broadway musical adaptation and a 2009 straight-to-DVD spinoff, Legally Blondes. A third installment in the franchise has been in the works for several years, with Witherspoon set to return as Elle and Mindy Kaling and Dan Goor set to write.

“I love this project. I am so excited about it. We are working on it,” Kaling, 44, told Entertainment Tonight in April 2022, revealing that writing the script was going “a little more slowly than we like” because they wanted to make sure they were doing the character of Elle justice.

“I think of it like Reese’s Avengers. Elle Woods is like her Captain America, and so you don’t want to be the person that messes up that story,” Kaling explained. “So for me, we are just taking out tie because we want it to be really good.”