We can all remember watching the early 2000s chick-flick-slash-feminist-manifesto that is Legally Blonde. The bubbly ex-sorority girl Elle Woods (played by Reese Witherspoon), the jack*ss she was determined to marry, the lengths she went to to win him back. But the most poignant detail about Legally Blonde was her success at Harvard Law despite being an ultra-feminine, dripping-in-pink, tiny-dog-wielding young woman everyone thought was never supposed to be there in the first place.
Image via Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
"Playing Elle Woods was just the highlight of my career, my early career for sure," she tells People. "She was such an underdog, and just trying to find those pieces of her that [were] really vulnerable. That feeling that people underestimate you and think you can't do things."
"I had no idea when we were making it that it was going to touch so many people's hearts," she continues. "The thing I love about Elle Woods is I share that performance with so many young people because of the stage play...I'll have all these cool people come up to me and be like 'I played Elle Woods!'...We're both Elle Woods!"
Elle Woods is, without a doubt, a feminist icon, and it’s safe to say that Reese Witherspoon took her character very seriously.
Image via Matt Winkelmeyer / Staff
You may be thinking: “What crazy techniques could Reese Witherspoon have used to create Elle Woods for Legally Blonde? It’s just a character!” At first, we thought that too. Was it really that hard to play a wannabe socialite on a mission to win back her boyfriend before using her intellect to crush it at Harvard Law and save her friend from a murder conviction à la her knowledge of perms? In short — yes, yes it was, and Reese spilled it all on how she transformed into the leading lady we know (and love) today.
In an interview with Harper's Bazaar, Reese mentions that she's always loved how much of a feminist Elle is. “She could have all this really strong ideology about what women could accomplish but she could also be very obsessed with clothes and hair and makeup, which a lot of young women are,” she says.
“The costume designer Sophie De Rakoff and I collaborated — this was our first collaboration — to create Elle Woods," she continues. "In the script it said she had been, like, a sunscreen model. So we knew we were gonna have to do some bikini looks and we were going to have to do bright colors, we wanted her hair really bright blonde."
Image via Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Elle was meant to come off to others as a classic California Barbie stereotype, the kind of surface-level person who never spent a moment thinking critically. To accomplish this, Sophie and Reese set out to find the perfect costumes to match Elle's 90s supermodel hair, and it was pretty intense, at least according to Reese.
"I remember the first day of going to Harvard that Sophie wanted [Elle] in an all pink leather look because she wanted her to look like a piece of luggage," Reese recalls. "We went to Frederick's of Hollywood to buy the bunny costume together and so I had to try on all these bustiers and make sure that all the bits were in the right places."
Image via Theo Wargo / Staff
But the “look” isn’t all that Reese was committed to. Reese needed to become Elle, sorority houses and all. “I would go and just hang out and listen to what they talked about, and the way they did their nails, and the way they decorated their rooms," she says. "It really influenced how I held my body, how I used my hands in the performance, the cadence of my speech…I took the part really seriously. It was all about just creating [a] character that I really understood throughout the entire shooting, so that you could throw anything my way and I could still stay in character.”
Whew — that’s a lot. Reese’s commitment to the role truly shines through the screen, and has *literally* changed pop culture forever. I mean, we have probably dressed as Elle Woods for Halloween at least a half dozen times.
Image via Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
“The impact of Legally Blonde has been unreal," she continues. "Just the idea that I've traveled all over the world...and had women come up to me and say, ‘I became a lawyer because of Elle Woods’...it's just meaningful. It's very resonant at a certain time in your life where you're really trying to discover who you are, and it's why it's one of my favorite movies I've ever done. It's one of my favorite characters I ever created.”
Honestly, we have so much respect for Reese and the incredible effort she put into perfecting the Elle we've idolized for decades. It’s unimaginable to quantify the impact this character has had on women — and society — as a whole, but if we had to guess, we know it would be enormous.
Is Elle Woods your favorite Reese Witherspoon character? Let us know @BritandCo!
Header image courtesy of Matt Winkelmeyer / Staff.
This post has been updated.
