Some actors and actresses in Hollywood have roles so iconic that people refuse to see them as someone else. Such was the case for Reese Witherspoon and her role in the Legally Blonde movies. The actress appeared in a recent interview and recalls that even jurors and people in legal courts often see her as a lawyer despite the lack of a law degree or any college degree for that matter.
Reese Witherspoon, 48, appeared on The Graham Norton Show earlier in January, during which she talked about some of her past roles. Naturally, Legally Blonde came up and the actress gives a fine detail of how the movies have affected her life after they blew up in popularity.
Seven years after Legally Blonde, Witherspoon was called for jury duty in Beverly Hills, which was, according to her, unfortunate since it took two weeks straight. It was rather long for a dog-bite case. Juror groups in the US often need a foreman to keep the jury focused and in check. That’s when the jurors started electing Reese Witherspoon as the foreman, and their primary reasoning was that she had a ‘law degree’.
The actress was shocked, of course:
“They were like, ‘You went to law school,’ I was like, ‘Y’all this is really upsetting. I definitely did not go to law school, I didn’t finish college.’ I played a lawyer in a movie once but they fully made me the foreman and I started realizing… people don’t know much about the law,” tells Reese Witherspoon.
So, while Graham Norton did praise Reese Witherspoon for stepping up for jury duty when most celebrities try to avoid it, the actress was not proud of it. In any case, here’s the full Graham Norton interview regarding Reese Witherspoon’s troubles with her Legally Blonde role:
Too bad Will Ferrell kept interrupting the actress and we never got additional details of how well Reese Witherspoon did as a juror or a jury foreman or whether she accepted the impromptu role.
Legally Blonde Defined Reese Witherspoon
Legally Blonde and its sequels presented Reese Witherspoon as a blonde lawyer named Elle Woods. The whole premise revolves around how the general negative stereotype of pretty blonde women was that they’re only good for their looks and nothing else, so Elle Woods’ mission was to prove otherwise by being a one-of-a-kind sorority girl with a law degree.
Reese Witherspoon then went on to explain in previous interviews that her Legally Blonde was the role of a lifetime, and it changed how Hollywood saw her. The film then went on to help her become iconic in the industry (and even in court, apparently).
Surprisingly enough, Legally Blonde is actually based on a true story as it was an adaptation of a novel of the same name, written by Amanda Brown, who based it on her real-life experience at Standford Law School.
