How many blondes did it take to change Harvard Law School? Just one. Two summers ago, Elle Woods worked her magic on moviegoers in the original Legally Blonde, a story about a fashionable fish-out-of-water who followed her heart to law school and ended up surprising everyone with her well-coiffed brainpower.
Now, how many blondes will it take to capture the heart of Washington, D.C.? Is there any question? Elle Woods is back – bigger, better, and blonder.
After Legally Blonde became a breakaway hit and launched Reese Witherspoon into the stratosphere, audiences demanded to see more of Elle Woods. Not only was Witherspoon’s creation acclaimed by critics (she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress for her performance), but filmgoers loved Elle’s luminous brand of resolve and fair-haired intellect. With designer clothes, a perfect head of hair, and the heart and mind to fill them out, audiences found a new favorite heroine.
Witherspoon and producer Marc Platt really enjoyed working together so closely on the first film, and with a hit under their belts, they were excited to take Elle on a new adventure – but not until they found the right script. Both were adamant that they not do a sequel just for the sake of doing a sequel.
“In the first movie, I loved that Elle so enjoys being a woman,” says Witherspoon. “She loves being girly, she loves her shoes, her nails, her hair. But she also has real ambition, real drive, real smarts. People really connected with her. They understood who Elle was, so we needed to raise the stakes and put her in an even more complicated and difficult scenario.”
“We wanted it to be even better then before,” says Platt. “Reese and I both felt a great sense of responsibility and obligation to Elle because of the way the character is viewed, especially by young people. They love to laugh at her, they love to see what she’s wearing, they love her dog, but they also love to root for her. And they’re really inspired by her. It was important to us to live up to that standard.”
In addition to reprising her role, Witherspoon also served as executive producer on Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. “It was a real treat for me to start working on the sequel even earlier in the process,” says Witherspoon. “I wasn’t involved in pre-production on the first film, so that was really exciting.”
“Do you guys remember that feeling that we used to get during a really intense spinning class… that feeling that we feel so truly amazing about ourselves? Well, that’s how I feel being a lawyer.” - Elle Woods
One of the first challenges facing the producers was to find a suitable director, one who would be true to the character of Elle Woods and her world but who was not afraid to also make the movie his own. They decided on legally bald but blonde-at-heart filmmaker Charles Herman-Wurmfeld.
Witherspoon says, “I was so excited to meet Charles – I loved his film Kissing Jessica Stein – and when we talked to him, we realized he really understood what we wanted to do with Legally Blonde 2. He understood the messages we wanted to get across, but he also knew we wanted to have fun. It had to be hysterical but have a lot of heart.”
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