- A prequel of Legally Blonde, Elle, is coming to Amazon Prime
- Reese Witherspoon said the idea was inspired by Netflix’s show Wednesday
- The show will follow Elle Woods in high school
Well, this is a crossover we never thought we’d hear about. Wednesday inspired the idea for Elle, the Amazon Prime prequel of Legally Blonde. On the Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, Reese Witherspoon dished on the prequel and said she was inspired by watching Wednesday. The prequel was announced in April 2024 with Witherspoon posting on her Instagram about it the following month. The prequel takes place before the two Legally Blonde movies, with Elle Woods in high school.
The 2000s hit Legally Blonde follows college student Elle Woods as she enrolls at Harvard Law School to win back her boyfriend, Warner (Matthew Davis). The franchise has two movies, with a third in the works. Yes, there is even a musical! The popularity of Legally Blonde wasn’t just because of Witherspoon’s outfits in the movie (although they were stunning), but also because of her character’s development.
Read More: Everything We Know About Elle
Elle Woods goes from a male-obsessed sorority girl to an independent and studious lawyer. Although she is already self-assured and confident in herself, it will be interesting to see how she got to that point, hence the excitement for the prequel. We’ve already covered what we know about Elle, but what about how Wednesday inspired the idea for the show?
What is Wednesday?
If you’ve been living under a rock, you may not know what Wednesday is. It is a Netflix horror show starring Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams. Ortega’s character is sent to Nevermore Academy to go to school with people like her, only to be caught up in a murder mystery plot.
The show premiered in November 2022 and became an instant success for the streaming site, breaking viewing records. It was renewed for season two in January 2023, and the next season is due later this year.
It isn’t the murder mystery idea, that inspired Elle though.
What inspired the idea for Elle?
She told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show what inspired the idea.
The 48-year-old told the late-night show host: “I saw that Wednesday Addams show. And I was like, ‘Oh, she’s in high school’. I loved it, I watched every episode, and I thought it was amazing. And I was like, ‘We should do Elle Woods in high school’. Because I wanted to see who she was before college, before law school. I started having all these ideas and these amazing writers came up with a great pitch. And now Amazon is making a show called Elle.”
We love to see it.
How old is Wednesday Addams?
Originally in the Addams Family, Wednesday is a young child. In the 1991 movie, she is ten years old, close to actress Christina Ricci’s age at the time, which was 11. In Addams Family Values, the sequel, her age is around 12 or 13.
The animated 2019 movie The Addams Family also keeps a similar theme with a preteen Wednesday, you can see she is young. In the Addams Family 2, the animated sequel, the age appears to stay the same.
In the Netflix show, she is noticeably aged up because she is attending high school. Since it isn’t mentioned that it’s her senior year, the character is probably around fifteen or sixteen, although it hasn’t been confirmed. Currently, Ortega is 22, but she was 18 or 19 when she filmed season 1.
Was Legally Blonde inspired by any other ideas?
Yes, actually, not enough TV shows though. Legally Blonde was adapted from the 2001 novel by Amanda Brown. The movie came out the same year. The novel chronicles experiences that Brown had while she was enrolled in Stanford Law School.
Brown had many similar characteristics to Elle Woods at the time: a love of pink, a love of girly things and makeup. Many of the characters, including Woods, are based on people Brown knew and encountered at Standford. An interview with Brown reports that letters she wrote home about her experiences and classmates formed the material for Legally Blonde.
On her experience at Standford she said: “I was in my first week of law school, in 1993, and I saw this flyer for “The Women of Stanford Law,” so I was like, “I’ll go and meet some nice girls. Whatever.”
She continued, “I went to the meeting, and these were not women. These were really angry people. The woman who was leading it spent three years at Stanford trying to change the name ‘semester’ to ‘ovester.’ I started laughing and I realized everyone in the room took it very seriously. So I didn’t make any friends there.”
Long story short, Brown ended up going to Arizona State University and writing a few more Legally Blonde books.
However, these books did not inspire Elle, that’s all Witherspoon’s (and the writers’) idea!
If you want more information on Elle, stay tuned for all the updates!
