Reese Witherspoon is sharing the secret behind the Valley Girl accent she used for her iconic character Elle Woods in Legally Blonde.
After the star-studded cast of the 2001 comedy reunited Saturday in New York City to honor the film’s 25th anniversary ahead of the release of Amazon Prime Video’s prequel series Elle, Witherspoon reflected on the role during an appearance Monday on Good Morning America.
“I came out with a big character voice and a big character walk, and I think I surprised a lot of people,” the 50-year-old Oscar winner said about playing the sorority sister-turned-lawyer in the classic film.
The Big Little Lies star added that she wanted to make it clear that her character sounded like she was from California, “so she drags her words a little bit.”
“I went around Beverly Hills and I watched women shop in shoe stores and how they held their nails and how they walked when they tried on pretty shoes,” Witherspoon said. “Women just act different when their nails are done and when they have on a pretty shoe, you just walk differently, so I developed it all while watching people shop in Beverly Hills.”
Witherspoon became visibly emotional Saturday as she celebrated the film and its new series alongside former co-stars Jennifer Coolidge, Selma Blair, Ali Larter, Matthew Davis and Victor Garber.
“When I walked in and I saw this moment, it just felt like it was galvanizing how I felt about playing this character — I’m gonna cry,” the actor told the Manhattan crowd through tears. “Playing this character for 25 years has been the privilege of my life.”
“People come up to me and they tell me stories about how they go to law school because of her or they named their daughter Elle or they overcame some incredible challenge in their life because she did that,” Witherspoon added.
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“She went through this experience of feeling like everybody was looking down on her or judged her, and I don’t know a person on Earth who hasn’t felt like an underdog in some situation.”
Witherspoon starred in the original movie as Elle Woods, who is introduced at the start of the film as the quintessential sorority girl at the University of California in Los Angeles, complete with a hot pink wardrobe and West Coast uptalk. Over the course of the film, she becomes a brilliant lawyer after she follows her boyfriend to Harvard Law School.
Now, the actor is passing the pink torch to newcomer Lexi Minetree for the forthcoming prequel series, which will follow Elle in her hometown high school in Seattle before the events of the original movie take place.
Elle comes out July 1 on Prime Video.