Lexi Minetree spent months preparing to become Elle Woods in Prime Video's prequel to Legally Blonde, but nothing prepared her for the moment Reese Witherspoon finally walked on set.
“I didn't know I was going to meet her, so I hadn't prepped. Maybe it's good, because I think if I had, I would have overthought it,” Minetree tells The National of the moment she met the 2001 film's star.
The nerves eased once they began talking. Both actresses are Southern, and Minetree heard her accent slip out as the conversation settled.
“It’s crazy when you get to meet people who you’ve seen your whole life, and you just see they’re normal people – incredible people with incredible talent,” she says. “But she just made me feel very at home.”
Soon after that, as the two grew more comfortable, their New-Age spiritual sides came to the fore.
“We did this kind of woo-woo acting exercise together where we held each other’s hands and looked in each other’s eyes, and we both were Elle Woods again,” Minetree says.
“Very woo-woo, but it was very beautiful too, and it really was like a transferring of Elle Woods from her to me.”
Twenty-five years after Witherspoon first played the California sorority president turned Harvard law student, she serves as an executive producer on the hit prequel, Elle, which returns to the character’s high school years. Season two is already filmed and is set to premiere in 2027.
The show begins in 1995, as 16-year-old Elle prepares for her junior year in Bel-Air. Her plans are upended when her parents announce that the family is moving to Seattle, placing her in a new school and a world far removed from the California life she knows.
Minetree won the part through an open casting call. Her task was to work backwards from a character audiences had known for 25 years, finding the teenager who would eventually become Witherspoon’s Elle.
“I always kind of felt like I understood Elle from the get-go,” she says. “Obviously, there was a lot of work that went into it. I wanted to capture her voice and her movement and everything.”
Witherspoon left her space to find the performance for herself, but the two stayed in close contact.
“She’s been really gracious with letting me take on this character and trusting me with it,” Minetree says.
“I’m a voice memo girl, so I would just be like, ‘Hey, Reese, what’s up? So I have some questions for you. Here you go,’ and she would respond,” she says.
“I never thought I’d have Reese Witherspoon on speed dial. It’s kind of crazy.”
But as the shoot intensified, Minetree started reaching out to Witherspoon as a surrogate older sister.
“I actually would go to her more for life advice rather than character,” she says. “I would go to her a lot for how to navigate this because it was a beast.
“I’ve never done anything to this magnitude before. I think I memorised 420 pages and … had two days off of the five-month shoot.
“Recently, I just wrapped season two and went straight into press for season one, and I had zero brain cells left at the end of that.”
But even at Minetree's lowest, Witherspoon was there for emotional support.
“She was always just there for me to be a sounding board,” Minetree says. “She’s been in this industry for so long and had so many experiences. She’s been the best mentor I could ever ask for.”
The series meets Elle before Harvard, the courtroom victories and the confidence with which she faces those who underestimate her. In Seattle, that confidence is still taking shape as her friendships, family and plans for the future begin to shift.
“The first thing that this version of Elle taught me was it’s OK to make mistakes, but it’s about what you do afterwards, and it’s about picking yourself up after a failure,” Minetree says.
“It’s very easy to keep going when things are going well. Everything feels great. But when things are going bad, how do you handle it? That shows your true character.”
The lesson has come in useful.
“I picked the most stable career on the planet, being an actor – notoriously a very stable career path,” Minetree jokes.
“There are times when I wanted to quit because you get another failure or you don’t get an audition, or whatever that is. But then you just brush yourself off and say, ‘I’m going to keep moving forward,’ even if it seems crazy, even if I’m not feeling that confident.
“Then you find your footing again, and I think that’s what Elle’s about – finding yourself and being yourself alongside that.”
Elle is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video globally
