Legally Blonde: As Elle Debuts, 21 Facts You Didn’t Know About The Original Film

It’s been 25 years since Elle Woods got into Harvard, introduced the world to the bend and snap and taught us all to never judge a book by its cover.

Legally Blonde premiered in 2001, becoming an instant hit with fans, inspiring viewers all around the globe and catapulting Reese Witherspoon to the A-list.

After Elle first donned her pink courtsuit, Legally Blonde became a global phenomenon, spawning a 2003 sequel, a Broadway musical and countless memes.

Now, the iconic character is back on our screens in the new prequel series Elle, which explores the iconic character’s life as a 16-year-old in Seattle in the 1990s.

To commemorate 25 years since the release of Legally Blonde, and the premiere of Elle on Prime Video, here are 21 behind-the-scenes facts you might not have known about the cult classic…

The Reese Witherspoon film is based on a 2001 novel by Amanda Brown – also called Legally Blonde – which itself was inspired by her own life at Stanford.

The author shares more than a passing resemblance to Elle, admitting to the San Francisco Chronicle: “I wanted to go to Stanford when I saw the mall.”

During her first week at Stanford Law, she realised how difficult it was to find another woman who shared her interests in fashion and shopping. So, she started writing letters home, lampooning her lecturers and students. These 300 pages became the basis of her book.

“I was sitting in tort class when the novel popped into my head,” recalled Amanda Brown to Stanford Magazine. “I wanted to do a parody of law school.”

“I wrote it all on pink paper, with my pink furry pen,” Amanda told the SF Gate in 2003, claiming she “finally found an agent” when they picked out of a pile of manuscripts solely “because it was on pink paper”.

Amanda self-published her book, but it soon found its way onto the desks of a production company, who then sent it to the team who would go on to write the Legally Blonde film.

“It immediately struck us as one of the greatest movie ideas ever, and we pitched it as ‘Clueless meets The Paper Chase’, one of those law school movies from the 1970s. I might have worn a lot of pink in the meeting,” writer Kirsten Smith said, as reported by The News Daily in an oral history article.

Legally Blonde has become known as a modern-day feminist classic, addressing topics like misogyny, sexual harassment in the workplace and power dynamics between men and women. But, the original script was much raunchier and had far less of a positive female-empowerment message.

“The first script was very raunchy, to be honest, in the vein of American Pie,” Jessica Cauffiel, who plays Margot, told The New York Post in 2021.

“What we know now as Legally Blonde, and what it began as are two completely different films. It transformed from nonstop zingers that were very adult in nature to this universal story of overcoming adversity by being oneself.”

The writers also explained there were a few other differences between the original manuscript and the final product.

“It wasn’t a murder trial, and she ended up with a professor, so we made some changes. It was a matter of finessing the details and adding a few characters, like Paulette and her friendship,” screenwriter Karen McCullah explained in that same interview.

In the Legally Blonde book, Elle attended Stanford, like its author. However, this was changed in the film adaptation, for the simple reason that the university wouldn’t let filming take place there.

The university has long implemented a no-filming rule due to “year-round campus activity” and in order to protect “the privacy and safety of its students, faculty and staff.”

After being turned down by Stanford – where, ironically, Reese Witherspoon also studied – the producers approached USC, which rejected the offer, telling Vulture that there was “too much stereotyping going on” in the script for their liking. The team then reached out to UCLA, Yale, and the University of Chicago — all of whom also wanted nothing to do with Elle Woods.

Finally, Harvard agreed to being mentioned in the film, although they didn’t want the movie filmed there.

If you think the film’s campus looks sunny for Massachusetts, where Harvard is actually situated, that’s because the movie they filmed at institutes in California.

While USC and UCLA didn’t want to be associated with Elle, they were happy for the filming to take place on their campuses all the same.

“We [talked] an entire sorority into going out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Reese offered to buy them free margaritas all night,” Jessica recalled to the New York Post.

“She leans over to me as the drinks are on the way and goes, ‘We’re not drinking anything. We’re drinking water’. We stayed sober as they got tanked, and we took notes.”

In a 2001 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Reese called her time with the sorority girls “an anthropological study”.

“You learn what they eat, how they behave, how they take care of their young, that sort of thing,” she quipped. “Seriously, though, I’ve learned that people don’t know what their worst characteristics are.”

She added: “It’s inherent to our nature that we don’t know what, in ourselves, is abhorrent to other people. So it’s really easy to infiltrate people’s lives. They showed all sides of themselves. Sometimes I’m shocked, like, I can’t believe they just said that to me!”

Jennifer Coolidge co-starred in the movie as Elle’s manicurist turned BFF Paulette.

In one of the decade’s most iconic film moments, she tries the infamous “bend and snap”, a move which “has a 98 percent success rate of getting a man’s attention”, according to her trainee lawyer friend.

Legally Blonde’s writing team have revealed to Entertainment Weekly that they invented the famous move at the L’ermitage Hotel bar in Beverly Hills over some drinks.

“We were in between meetings and working on the script,” writer Karen McCullah recalled. “And we were trying to come up with a B-plot that happened in the nail salon and we were working in weird directions. Like, maybe it gets robbed, all sorts of crazy stuff.”

The writing duo then realised that they were overthinking the moment, which is when the “bend and snap” was invented.

“Kirsten jumped off her barstool and was like, ‘Like this?’ And then she did that move,” Karen said, revealing that the team came up with the “bend and snap” name the spot.

“It just cracks us up that that’s become such a lasting thing that people remember. It’s literally the silliest thing in the movie,” Karen added.

The now-iconic move was choreographed by 80s icon and Mickey singer Toni Basil.

“I choreographed iconic things for David Bowie and Tina Turner,” Toni told The New York Times in 2021. “People interview me and they go, ‘You did the bend and snap?’ It’s like, ‘what, a one-and-a-half-minute number in the movie?’. But it was such an integral part.”

The original idea was for the bend and snap to be a full-length musical number, but this was eventually shortened for the final cut.

Ultimately, Reese explained, “it just felt odd” to have a full bend and snap number, “because there was just one musical sequence”.

Screenwriters Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith didn’t picture any specific star in mind when adapting Amanda Brown’s book.

However, they were delighted when Reese Witherspoon signed on to play the lead, as she was a rising star at the time, having already appeared in Election and Cruel Intentions.

“We loved her in Freeway. She had so much moxie in that,” Kirsten told Business Insider. “She had the perfect balance of comedic ability, the intellectual vibes, and the real dramatic chops, too. She’s the entire package.”

Reese doesn’t look back too fondly on her Legally Blonde audition, explaining to The Hollywood Reporter in 2019 that her manager told her to dress sexy, to differentiate her from her “shrew” character from Election.

After a string of failed auditions and missed roles, her team had an idea.

“My manager finally called and said: ‘You’ve got to go meet with the studio head because he will not approve you. He thinks you really are your character from Election and that you’re repellent,’” she explained.

During the audition process to play Elle, Reese had to speak to studio execs while in full glam.

“I remember a room full of men who were asking me questions about being a coed and being in a sorority, even though I had dropped out of college four years earlier and I have never been inside a sorority house,” she recalled.

Dead To Me star Christina Applegate admitted she rejected the lead role in Legally Blonde, calling the decision a “big fucking mistake”.

In a 2023 interview with Vanity Fair, Christina said she turned it down as the role was too similar to her famous sitcom character in Married With… Children.

“I wouldn’t toy with the idea of Legally Blonde because it felt too fresh getting out of Married…With Children,” she explained, referring to her dumb blonde character Kelly Bundy in the family comedy. “It was very similar on paper.”

She joked that she would have “Witherspoon money” now if she had signed on to the role, but conceded: “You can’t imagine anyone playing Elle Woods other than Reese Witherspoon? I would have completely screwed it up.”

Interestingly, both Christina and Reese went on to play sisters of Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel in Friends, although they never shared the screen in the award-winning sitcom.

Producer Marc Platt put Britney Spears’ name forward as a suggestion when Christina Applegate turned down the part.

“Marc once [mentioned] Britney Spears, and I was like, ‘No, that’s not a good idea’,” writer Kirsten Smith revealed. “I think she hosted SNL the night before, and his kids were into her, so he threw her name out there.”

While Britney writes about being offered roles in Chicago and The Notebook in her autobiography, The Woman In Me, she never mentions Legally Blonde, so it could be that the pop diva was unaware her name was ever on the table.

Selma Blair’s performance as the “frigid bitch” Vivian Kensington is now considered iconic, but another actor almost wore those infamous pearls.

“I remember talk about getting Chloë Sevigny to play Vivian,” screenwriter Kirsten recalled to The New York Times. “That didn’t work out, and we ended up with our queen Selma Blair.”

She noted that “Selma and Reese were close, because they had done Cruel Intentions together”, meaning their friendship served as a “great anchor for everything” on screen.

“I was the last person cast, and I remember Chloe Sevigny passed,” Selma also told Entertainment Weekly.

“Her fingers are much too elegant; they needed someone with a bony little finger,” the actor joked.

Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Coolidge recently reunited for a 25th anniversary catch-up, where they shared their experiences of working on the film.

During this chat, they spilled some gossip, including why Jennifer auditioned for the movie.

“I thought this was the funniest thing. I was so lucky to get cast in this movie, and it is one of my favourite jobs of all time,” she recalled, joking: “But I stupidly thought that when I was auditioning, I thought I was gonna be Elle.”

Jennifer Coolidge’s gives an iconic performance as Elle’s beautician, but she wasn’t their first choice.

In The New York Times’ piece on Legally Blonde, Jennifer shared some of the other actors she’d heard were in the line-up to play Paulette.

“I don’t know if they’re true [but I heard] that Courtney Love was up for [my] role,” she claimed. “I heard Kathy Najimy was up for it, [too].”

Future Euphoria star Alanna Ubach used an unusual tactic to land the role of Elle’s sorority sister.

Jessica Cauffiel had already been cast as fellow Delta Nu Margot when she met Alanna in the bathroom during a chemistry read.

“She’s like, ‘Hey, hey, are you in this movie?’” Jessica recalled during the virtual 20th anniversary reunion.

Jessica then claimed that Alanna begged for help booking the job, telling her: “I don’t have any money, I need to make rent, will you help me make rent?”

“She was so funny and so ballsy, I said, ‘Okay’,” Jessica continued.

From there, the two put their heads together and “choreographed simultaneous moves”, which Jessica made the casting directors think they were naturally in sync.

“We spent a lot of time faxing the casting director, like ′Luke Wilson, Luke Wilson!’” Kristen explained.

“And then, finally, after the table read where a different actor played Emmett, we were like ‘Luke Wilson, Luke Wilson!’. And he was like, ‘That’s a really good idea.’ We were like, ‘We’ve been telling you!’”

Luke was subsequently offered the role without even needing to audition.

While the Legally Blonde script didn’t leave a lot of room for improvisation, the screenwriters recalled to Business Insider that the cat still found room to add a personal touch to their characters.

During rehearsals, Jason Christopher came up with the line “you bitch!” – which his character shouts after his boyfriend Enrique denies their relationship in his testimony.

The screenwriters also revealed that it was Alanna Ubach’s idea to speak fluent Vietnamese at the nail salon.

“I thought, ‘How funny would it be if we frequent this nail salon so much that I’ve been immersed in Vietnamese and I’ve picked up the language?’” the actor said.

Reese took on the role of Elle Woods just months after welcoming her daughter Ava in September 1999. As a result, while she looked fresh and bright on camera, she didn’t always feel that way.

“Some nights Ava would wake up screaming because she had the flu, and I would spend most of the night trying to rock her back to sleep and then have to be on the set at seven in the morning for make-up!” she explained to Cinema.com in 2001.

“And then you throw in the fact that I’m supposed to be playing a very bubbly and energetic California preppy who is smiling all the time!”

“I kept thinking, ‘I’m going to kill myself! I’m never going to make it!’” she joked.

While putting Legally Blonde together, screenwriter Kirsten had read an article which said that video applications were the done thing when trying to impress professors at places like Harvard – and they wanted Elle’s to be extra special.

“We wanted to shoot [Elle, Serena and Margot] chasing Judge Judy wherever she tapes her show and them being like, ‘Judge Judy! Judge Judy! Can we get an autograph?’ Kirsten said. Unfortunately, the team couldn’t get the real-life judge on board, so the idea was ditched.

Alanna Ubach’s alternative idea was also cut.

“I thought, ‘Reese, what if Ryan Phillippe played a really famous judge who had his own show, and we have him on billboards’,” the actor said of Reese’s then-husband.

Reese wasn’t keen on the idea of adding her partner to the film, though, reportedly telling her: “Alanna, no one’s going to believe that my husband’s a judge. Are you kidding me?”

In a 2001 interview with Movieline, Matthew admitted he acted like a “bumbling idiot” around his co-star because of his crush – despite her being married to Ryan Phillippe at the time.

“At first I was such a bumbling idiot with her, the producers pulled me aside one day to see if I was OK,” he revealed.

When the actor later confessed his feelings to the Election star, she let him down gently.

“She was like, ‘That’s so sweet!’,” he explained. “OK, let’s work on the scene…’.”

In hindsight, Matthew admits his behaviour on the set of Legally Blonde wasn’t always the most professional.

“I felt starstruck by all this because it happened so quickly and I hadn’t adjusted,” he told Teen Vogue in 2017. “I definitely wasn’t cool. At the first table read, I just kept going on and on about how much I loved her work, fawning all over her.”

Matthew told News.com.au that he also “adored” his on-screen girlfriend, Selma Blair, during filming.

“I developed a crush on her at the time but she was with someone else — I think she was dating the guy from Rushmore [actor Jason Schwartzman] but he was coming around and I was kind of like ‘who is this guy?!’” Matthew shared.

Legally Blonde famously ends with Elle freeing her client, graduating at the top of her class, becoming best friends with her former nemesis and staying with doting boyfriend Emmett.

However, the cast told The New York Times that the ending in the script was markedly different.

“The first ending was Elle and Vivian in Hawaii in beach chairs, drinking margaritas and holding hands,” said Jessica Cauffiel. “The insinuation was either they were best friends or they had gotten together romantically.”

At the 2015 Vulture Festival, the screenwriters revealed that their original script wrapped at the courthouse right after Elle won the case, with her and Emmett kissing on the steps.

“It was just kind of a weak ending,” Karen McCullah admitted. “The kiss didn’t feel right because it’s not a rom-com — it wasn’t about their relationship.

“So test audiences were saying, ‘We want to see what happens – we want to see her succeed.’ So that’s why we rewrote for graduation.”

“We screened the movie two or three times, and every time people didn’t want to end it with a kiss,” she also explained to the New York Times.

“They thought it wasn’t a story about [Elle] getting a boyfriend, which was really cool to have people say that.”

An interesting part of this axed ending would have fast-forwarded to a year later, with Elle and a now-blonde Vivian starting their own Blonde Legal Defence Club at Harvard Law School.

“There was an ending that Vivian was blonde, and I did [go blonde],” Selma admitted to the podcast Shut Up Evan. “I have the Polaroids. I looked just like Faye Dunaway in Bonnie And Clyde – the beret was on and the blonde.”

Legally Blonde is now streaming on Prime Video, as are the first episodes of Elle.