To audition to play the teenage Elle Woods, heroine of Amazon Prime Video\u2019s prequel series to \u201cLegally Blonde,\u201d Lexi Minetree put on a pink bikini and reclined in a hot tub. Then the fun began.<\/p>\n
Inspired by a scene in the 2001 movie, in which a swimsuit-clad Elle (Reese Witherspoon), submits a video application<\/a> to Harvard Law School, Minetree lists off her own qualifications: staying fit (she hoisted two-pound weights); learning new, detail-oriented skills (she crocheted on camera); and juggling her various interests (she literally juggled limes \u2014 \u201cI\u2019m a hobby collector,\u201d she told me).<\/p>\n \u201cIt was absolutely ridiculous,\u201d Minetree said of her tape<\/a> over coffee in Manhattan recently. \u201cBut in the best way \u2014 in Elle\u2019s way, because she is ridiculous, because she doesn\u2019t care about being cringey. She just is herself and owns it, which I love.\u201d<\/p>\n And it worked: Minetree, now 25, a little-known actress from the suburbs of Atlanta, landed the high-profile starring role in \u201cElle,\u201d<\/a> which begins streaming on Wednesday. \u201cWhen I saw her tape, I was like, are we the same person?\u201d Witherspoon, who conceived the series and executive produced it, said in a video<\/a> with her plucky-chinned look-alike.<\/p>\n Minetree (pronounced MIN-eh-tree) radiates Elle vibes in other ways too \u2014 what Lauren Neustadter, an executive producer of the series, called \u201cthe combination of being incredibly diligent and incredibly optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n Those qualities stretch far: The \u201cLegally Blonde\u201d universe already spans the original novel, two movie sequels and a Broadway musical. In the quarter century since Elle Woods appeared as a thoroughly accessorized, preternaturally confident sorority girl who battles blonde stereotypes and a rotten ex-boyfriend to propel herself to the top of her law school class, the character has become a huge feminist icon<\/a>. \u201cWhat, like it\u2019s hard?\u201d might as well be embroidered on the backpacks of every overachieving coed. (And there are a lot of them in Elle\u2019s wake; Witherspoon has said<\/a> that women \u2014 who now make up the majority of law school students \u2014 routinely tell her they were inspired to attend after seeing the movie). <\/p>\n But Elle Woods didn\u2019t just emerge strutting in her Jimmy Choos. What the \u201cElle\u201d creators wanted to capture was how she arrived at that sparkplug energy as she grew up. \u201cShe is who she is in the movie,\u201d said Laura Kittrell, a showrunner. \u201cShe just can\u2019t be fully formed.\u201d<\/p>\n In the series Elle is still self-conscious enough to worry about what others think of her. As a 16-year-old girl, \u201cyou internalize what people say,\u201d Kittrell said. \u201cThe thing that Lexi brings is that vulnerability.\u201d<\/p>\n The series is set in 1995, the year the Elle of the movie would have been a junior in high school. After her family\u2019s circumstances change, Elle and her parents (Tom Everett Scott and a scene-stealing June Diane Raphael) leave her natural surroundings \u2014 the luxe life and serious shopping of Bel Air, Calif. \u2014 and land in peak grunge-era Seattle. Perky and pink doesn\u2019t fly there; Elle earnestly bedazzles a Nirvana tee only to be rewarded with the worst \u201990s epithet: poser. She struggles mightily to fit in and to comprehend an environment where everything is not clear-cut and cushy.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s kind of learning in real time, oh, maybe the world is different than I once experienced it,\u201d Minetree said. \u201cMaybe I care about different things that I didn\u2019t even know I should care about.\u201d<\/p>\n Growing up, the eldest child in a blended family with her mother and stepfather, both accountants, Minetree was a bookworm \u2014 \u201cI won this award for reading the most books in the entire school\u201d \u2014 who found her tribe among the theater kids. \u201cThat\u2019s where I learned to feel most myself, or my favorite version of myself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She graduated from U.S.C. with a double major in theater and public relations, landed the requisite young-actor \u201cLaw & Order\u201d credit and got a taste of being first on the call sheet on Lifetime movies like \u201cThe Paramedic Who Stalked Me\u201d and \u201cMy Amish Double Life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSubtle, I know,\u201d she cracked.<\/p>\n But comedy was new to her, and at 5-foot-2 \u2014 about the same as Witherspoon \u2014 she worried about doing it in six-inch heels. \u201cI don\u2019t know if you can see the fear in my eyes,\u201d she said of an early scene where she (successfully) totters down stairs. (Like all her young castmates, she also had to learn how to use an old-school phone.)<\/p>\n Minetree doesn\u2019t recall the first time she saw \u201cLegally Blonde\u201d \u2014 she was born just before it arrived in theaters. \u201cI just remember that it was kind of a comfort movie, especially as a young woman,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was so empowering to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n Others who came of age with Elle Woods felt her influence deeply. \u201cIt changed my life,\u201d Neustadter volunteered. \u201cSeeing that she was underestimated and sometimes misunderstood, but that belief in herself and determination and perseverance could actually lead to tremendous accomplishment \u2014 I think that really set me on my path.\u201d She is now Witherspoon\u2019s producing partner at the media company Hello Sunshine.<\/p>\n The idea for the series came from a conversation the two had in 2023 about teenage girls and the negative messages they receive on social media and elsewhere, with deleterious effects on their sense of self-worth. \u201cReese was the one that said, \u2018I think this generation needs Elle Woods,\u2019\u201d Neustadter recalled. Within a few months, they had sold the series to Amazon.<\/p>\n The first season is stuffed with one-liner references and fan service, like the moment Elle got and named Bruiser, her Chihuahua (a fellow \u201cGemini vegetarian\u201d<\/a>). A second season has already been filmed.<\/p>\n Minetree didn\u2019t just parrot the movie\u2019s admissions tape. A natural brunette, she had gone blonde on a whim a few months before the open casting for the show was announced. (Around 5,000 people applied.) She immediately had a friend take headshots of her new look \u2014 pink outfit, golden waves \u2014 to post on her IMDB listing.<\/p>\n \u201cMy P.R. brain kicked in,\u201d she said. \u201cIf they looked me up, I wanted them to see Elle. I didn\u2019t want to give them a single reason\u201d to pass. (Anticipating and navigating around people\u2019s perceptions \u2014 a very Elle Woods move.)<\/p>\n Then there were her binders full of notes \u2014 tabbed, color-coded, constantly re-collated. \u201cThis very confusing system,\u201d laughed Caroline Dries, the other showrunner. But it was effective: Before the first day of shooting, when many actors barely know their own lines, Minetree had memorized the scripts for all eight episodes.<\/p>\n The producers still sounded shocked talking about it, especially because Minetree was in nearly every scene, with dialogue-heavy material. \u201cShe\u2019s never going to have this many words a minute unless she\u2019s in a David Mamet play,\u201d Kittrell joked.<\/p>\n After long days of filming \u2014 Vancouver stood in for Seattle \u2014 Minetree holed up in her hotel gym, poring over her binders while on the treadmill. (Elle\u2019s study habits, to a tee<\/a>.) She worked with a vocal coach to master the character\u2019s distinctive cadence: bright, airy, bouncy and yet \u201cnot like a Valley Girl,\u201d Minetree emphasized.<\/p>\n Kittrell and Dries compared her to Lucille Ball in her delivery and physical comedy; in the photo shoot for this article, she bounded barefoot up rocks in Central Park, while wearing a diaphanous slip dress \u2014 a nymph with a bouldering habit.<\/p>\n \u201cElle is sort of the heightened thing in the show, and then everything else around her is fairly grounded,\u201d Dries said.<\/p>\n Raphael, the comic actress (\u201cGrace & Frankie\u201d), whose character is meant to be a stand-in for the generation of women who did grow up with Elle, said she was \u201cblown away\u201d by how well Minetree handled being a leader on set and by her portrayal.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not an impression. It is her offering her own humanity and past and history to this character,\u201d she said, \u201cdealing with the sort of mania of hormones, and what you go through as a teenage girl.\u201d<\/p>\n Minetree, who moved to New York after college and still lives with two roommates in a Brooklyn apartment, knows her life may change imminently, even if she can\u2019t quite believe it. Getting recognized on the street \u2014 \u201cI can\u2019t imagine what that would be like,\u201d she said, blue eyes wide. But she hopes to approach it with the unabashed moxie (or the cringe) of Elle.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to take my work seriously,\u201d she said. \u201cBut not myself.\u201d<\/p>\n Alexis Soloski contributed reporting.<\/p>\n