Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images, Everett Collection, Paramount
June Diane Raphael is good at being a mom. It’s true onscreen — where she’s Eva, mother of a teenage Elle Woods, in Prime Video’s new Legally Blonde prequel Elle — and off, where she’s bringing up two tweenage boys (“until they tell me otherwise”) alongside husband Paul Scheer.
Part of what makes Raphael such a good onscreen mom, she says, is that she’s pulling from her experience with her own mother, who died unexpectedly 19 years ago. “I definitely felt her unconditional love and support, and I’m so grateful,” Raphael says. “Eva rides so hard for Elle and is so invested and in awe of her daughter, which is so beautiful to watch and kind of rare to see on TV, where sometimes the representations of moms and daughters can skew a little competitive.”
That genuine affection and admiration is something Raphael is trying to pass on to her own kids, whom she calls her greatest teachers. “My children stretch me in all the ways,” she says, adding that they’ve also made her rethink some of the things she was taught as a child.
“No amount of therapy or antidepressants can heal like reparenting yourself through your children, and I think that’s really special,” Raphael says.
Photo: Michel Linssen/Redferns
One of my goals for the summer is to really expand my kids’ musical taste.
Sometimes in the car home from school, they’re really fried and they just want to sit in silence. But other times, I am trying to give them more of an education in music. We were just listening to Taylor Swift because we like “The Fate of Ophelia,” but also, there’s a lot of ’70s classic rock I’m trying to introduce them to, like Fleetwood Mac. We were listening to Hall & Oates today, and they love the song “Africa” by Toto.
Our younger son has an excellent ear. He can listen to accents and music and he can mimic them both. Where he knows most of his music from at this point is soundtracks, so he will hear a song out in the wild, like at a restaurant, and be like, “Oh, this is from the second Minions movie,” or whatever. He’s learning about a lot of music through big blockbusters, like Guardians of the Galaxy. They love that soundtrack, and that’s great because there’s some really amazing music on there.
Photo: Buena Vista Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection
My kids would watch a movie every night if they could. I think, in the time of, quote, unquote, “creators,” like these YouTubers that they or their friends think are funny, it’s really important to me and Paul that we introduce them to real comedy. I take that as seriously as I do the golden rules about how to behave — like, I can’t have you thinking that that is good.
We’ve watched a lot of the comedies that Paul and I loved growing up. There’s some stuff that I fast-forward because it’s problematic. It’s not like, “I can put this on and go make dinner.” Like, we have to be there talking through everything and potentially fast-forwarding stuff.
I wanted to show them Uncle Buck the other day, and it was like, “Oh, there’s a whole rape story line I completely forgot about.” Another of my favorite movies was Adventures in Babysitting, and there’s some stuff in there, too, but I was so excited to show it to them. They loved it, which was good because it’s really hard when they don’t love something I loved so much. They love Troop Beverly Hills, too, and just saw Ocean’s 11 and loved it.
I have a Notes app that I keep of all the movies I want to show them. Unfortunately, I’m also doing some countercultural work because Paul has been showing them all the Jackass movies and they love them so much. They just saw the new one at a special screening and were obsessed with it. I have an appreciation, I really do, but I’m also like, “I need you to see the scene in Big Business where they’re in the bathroom and Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler are doing amazing clownwork.”
We are into MrBeast, so if MrBeast puts out a new video, we will be watching it. I genuinely enjoy it, too. I think he’s very good at what he does, and we really loved Beast Games.
With our youngest, if I’m scrolling on TikTok, I have a special folder for him that’s a collection of videos that I save. It’s mostly people falling or people trying to walk out to their cars during ice storms, but I also save videos of dogs doing funny things. Then, once a month, it’ll be like, “All right, come on over, Sam. It’s time to do some TikTok,” and we’ll look through all those videos together.
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Paul taught the kids how to play poker, so we play that together. I play mahjong with my youngest too. I did a little bit of a modified version of it for him, but he picked it up pretty quick. With our oldest, we like cards, so I’ll play gin rummy with him.
I will play Tetris on the Xbox with our oldest, too, and I absolutely love it. They’re trying to get me into some other games, and I wish I could remember the names of them, but it’s a very special occasion when I agree to sit down and play a video game with them.
This is also where I’m very much like my mom. Like, I never saw my mom with her hair wet. We would all go in the ocean and lakes and stuff, and I never saw my mom put her head underwater. There’s just certain things she didn’t do, which I now deeply respect because there are certain things I don’t want to do. Like, I’m not going to really sit down and play video games, so that’s for them, but occasionally, I’ll do Tetris because that’s a very healing game for me to play.
When the boys were little, I loved the Sandra Boynton books. I remember when I wrote my book, we were published at Workman Publishing. We had a couple offers from different publishers, but I remember going to the Workman building to pitch the book and have them talk about the proposal and I saw all of these little, kooky Sandra Boynton books. I just find them to be so beautiful and funny and simple, and both of our boys were obsessed with them at the time.
So, anyway, they represented her and published those books, which is why I wanted to go there. Then I found out all about her — like, where she lives and her life — and then through the publishers, she ended up sending me a bunch of books, and I wrote her a letter to say “thank you.”
One of the cool things is that the boys are super into Big Nate. Well, our youngest is. Our oldest has definitely gotten out of it by now, but Paul and I were both on that show, so that is one of the great thrills, when you can be on something that your children love.
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My youngest son and I watch RuPaul’s Drag Race. He’s so competitive that the competition piece of it really spoke to him.
I was going to take him to see Stop That Train, too, because I loved that script so much when I read it. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I love that kind of Airplane comedy, and the jokes were killing me. I loved being on the set of that movie so much, too — like, I had a great time — so I thought it would be hilarious.
So I was going to take him to see it, but then one of the producers I know very well was like, “I don’t know … ” and so I haven’t yet. We’ll see.
Photo: Robert Voets/CBS
We are Survivor people, and we loved this last season. Every time we watch it, I tell the kids how badly I want to go on Survivor, too, and we talk about it. The thing I’m most interested in doing is, of course, the physical challenges, but what holds me back is knowing they have to detox from caffeine because I genuinely, at this age, can’t not have coffee. I did say to both of them, though, that if there’s ever a parent-child season like there has been in the past, I will apply with them.
Photo: Jordin Althaus/NBC
We watched all of Brooklyn Nine-Nine last summer — like, every single episode. I had never seen it, and I’m realizing that there are a lot of really important comedic series that I didn’t watch because I was so upset I wasn’t on them. Like, that’s why I’d never seen The Office.
But we watched all of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and we loved it so very much, and then there was a lot of grief around it ending, which I wasn’t expecting from the kids. Once we were in the second-to-last season, I felt them getting scared. When the characters left, like Chelsea Peretti, that was a big deal, too. They really felt so deeply about them, and it reminded me that there’s something really beautiful about sitcoms and comedies where the stakes are pretty low, ultimately, but you’re so comforted by these characters. You love them, and they’re in your living room, and you’re with each other laughing.
They were so scared of that experience ending that Paul and I were like, “Guys, there will be another one. You’ll love something else, we promise, and we can always go back and rewatch it again too.” It was hard, though, because they didn’t want to watch any other show after, and it was like watching them go through their first heartbreak. But then we started them on The Office, and I think we’re on season five now, and they’re just loving it.
I’m loving it, too. I think it’s been enough time now to where I’m like, I don’t have to be jealous and mad that I’m not doing these parts. I can just love it. Everything happened for a reason.
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