For nearly twenty-five years, the legacy of Elle Woods has been an undisputed global phenomenon. With her signature pink wardrobe, unapologetic optimism, and razor-sharp intellect, she flipped the script on Hollywood stereotypes and inspired generations of women to embrace their intelligence without compromising their femininity. Elle taught us that you can care about cosmopolitan fashion and constitutional law, all while refusing to shrink yourself to fit into a room. Now, a brand-new generation is getting a front-row seat to her origin story. The highly anticipated prequel series ELLE transports us back to the nineties, offering a colorful, nostalgic look at how a teenage Elle navigated the treacherous waters of high school, and how those formative experiences shaped the icon she would ultimately become. 

Last year, I visited the set in Vancouver and watched as the cast put their own spin to the characters: Lexi Minetree as Elle Woods, June Diane Raphael as Eva Woods, Tom Everett Scott as Wyatt Woods, Chandler Kinney as Kimberly, Gabrielle Policano as Liz, Zac Looker as Dustin and Jacob Moskovitz as Miles. 

Stepping onto the bustling Vancouver sets of ELLE during the filming of the highly anticipated season finale felt like stepping directly into a living, breathing time capsule. The craftsmanship embedded in the production design was thrilling – most notably the stark, vivid visual storytelling told through the environments themselves. Walking through the space, you are instantly struck by the contrast between Elle’s brilliantly pink, unapologetically vibrant bedroom and the soothing, sophisticated blue-themed sanctuary belonging to June’s character, Eva. It’s a tactile representation of the show’s core generational dynamic.

The aesthetic world-building came alive during a backstage tour of the costume department. To see the sheer architecture of the show’s wardrobe is to understand its heart; racks upon racks of meticulous, specific nineties fashion, featuring every conceivable shade of pink imaginable. From structured school looks to iconic statement pieces, the dedication to Elle’s signature palette is absolute – and yes, even Bruiser has his own dedicated line-up of custom coordinated canine looks. 

But the real magic happened when the cameras started rolling for the final episode. Watching Lexi and June work off one another in real-time was a moment. The level of intuitive trust between the two actors was palpable as they effortlessly delivered take after take. Rather than sticking to a rigid delivery, they treated each line like a living thing, playing with the emotional architecture of the scene by delivering subtly nuanced versions of the same dialogue.

Carrying the show on her shoulders is the 25-year-old Minetree who, when the open audition was announced, sent in her audition tape – except she creatively recreated it as the iconic Elle Woods Harvard audition tape. The actress more than proves her mettle with her Elle energy and sharp comic timing. 

Taking on a character as globally adored as Elle Woods is no small feat, but for Minetree, stepping into those iconic outfits became a profound exercise in personal liberation.

“When I’m her, I feel like my favorite version of myself,” Lexi reflects, her eyes lighting up. “I feel like she’s impacted so many women, and also she’s just really fun to play. She’s like my favorite part of myself. She’s goofy, and she doesn’t care about being nonchalant or making herself small.”

In a television landscape that often encourages young women to tone it down, playing a teenage Elle felt like the perfect antidote to societal expectations.

“I think, especially as women, we’re told, like, ‘Oh, be demure, don’t be too big. You’re gonna embarrass yourself.’ My takeaway? Let’s embarrass ourselves more! I leave set every day embarrassed, and I think that means I’m doing something right.”

That fiercely protective, authentic energy seamlessly translates into the central female friendships on screen. The camaraderie between the show’s core trio feels deeply real, rooted in a genuine ability to hold space for one another—and, occasionally, lose their minds together during late-night shoots. Case in point: a pivotal, emotionally heavy scene for the ending of Episode 4 that devolved into pure midnight madness.  

“Gabby and I, we’re just not good at doing serious together,” Lexi laughs. “Once you find something funny that you shouldn’t, but then as soon as you think of it, you can’t get out of it. It’s also 2AM.”

“We literally cannot do scenes together,” Policano corroborates. “Or when we do, we can’t actually make eye contact when the camera slips, because we’ll break so fast. We laugh so hard.”

Kinney even tried to step in: “I was in the scene right before, and I was trying to read with them individually to help get them out of it. I was worried. Eventually, I just left! I was like, ‘See you guys, tomorrow. You are not wrapping tonight.’”

The camaraderie the trio share is electric – the trio share a mutual adoration and emotional support which they say is “holding space for each other.”

“Oh, we love to compliment each other,” Kinney beams. “Gabby lights up every single room that they walk into. It’s so true. I will be having the worst day ever, and Gabby will just come in and say the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard in my life – like, definitely a sentence I’ve never heard any human utter on planet Earth and instantly, my day is made.”

Turning to Minetree, Kinney adds: “Lexi is so insightful and intuitive. I’m always operating way up here, moving really quickly, and Lexi is so good at just sitting down and getting to the heart of the matter. She’ll casually drop pearls of wisdom, and I’m just looking at her like, ‘How many lives have you lived?’ She’s very, very wise.”

Policano nods in agreement. “Lexi is so good at pulling you out of a rut. We’ll be struggling with something, and she’ll step back and say, ‘Yeah, these are the things that are wrong, but these are the things we can do about it, and here is the silver lining.’“

As for Kinney? The girls have a very specific title for her. “Chandler is our ‘Mama Bear,'” Gabby reveals. “She will take care of you in a serious way, maybe even before she takes care of herself.”

“Chandler was the person who offered to help Gabby and me pack up our things at the end of the day because we would honestly lose our heads if they weren’t attached to our bodies,” Lexi notes.

Beyond the core friendships, ELLE places a beautifully refreshing focus on maternal lineage, offering a healthy, nuanced mother-daughter dynamic that stands out in a television landscape often dominated by toxic family tropes.

“I love what the show does with the healthy mother-daughter relationship,” reflects Raphael, who plays a central maternal role in the series. “I had a wonderful relationship with my own mother, and I’ve always been confused by the representation of mother-daughter relationships on TV. It can often skew really competitive and weird. But it’s really special to portray this dynamic where they’re both learning from each other. It’s not just Eva depositing information and life lessons; she’s learning a lot from Elle. If you are awake for the experience of parenting, your children become your greatest teachers.”  

For Scott, the ties to the original Legally Blonde film franchise brought a distinct layer of personal legacy to his audition process as Wyatt Woods. “The night before my final audition, my daughter and I were staying in a hotel room, and we just put the movie on. She has always loved it. There was definitely added pressure for me to get this job because of that!” 

Stepping onto the set was also a hilarious history lesson for the younger stars, who approached nineties technology like vintage artifacts. 

“It was really cool to see them approach everything like they were archeologists,” June laughs. 

Scott added, “Lexi literally went over to the prop fax machine, stared at it, and asked, ‘Fax machines… do they always have a phone attached to them?’ 

“And the beeper was another thing,” said Raphael. “The girls who had beepers in my high school—well, some of them were drug dealers! But I had a friend who had one and I thought, ‘Wow, it doesn’t get any cooler than that.’ I would just send her messages that said ‘I love you’ and that was enough. It has been incredibly trippy to be back in that time, but as an adult in the show.” 

That grounded, family-first energy was perfectly anchored by guest star and 90s icon James Van Der Beek. Rapahel recalls their time together with immense fondness. “Honestly, what I am walking away with from my time with James is just how much he adored his family,” she said softly. “He brought two of his many daughters to set at different times. As a parent, bringing your child to a set, you really want to make sure it’s the right workplace modeled for them. I was so honored that he did that. Between every take, we would talk about our kids and what they were going through. He was just absolutely in love with his children and his wife, Kimberly. Beyond that, he’s just an incredible actor—so charming and endlessly easy to work with.”

While the women of ELLE are busy rewriting the rules of female empowerment, the guys are are having just as much fun dismantling classic teen movie archetypes. 

“I remember exactly when I was cast,” says Moskovitz. “I had a phone call with a friend and said, ‘I don’t know how I’m gonna play the jock. It’s so strange to me, it’s not registering in my brain.’ I was thinking of how we’ve traditionally seen jocks presented in media. And he was like, ‘Yeah, but think about Legally Blonde. That’s exactly the point. That’s not who you are on the inside, and maybe that’s a huge asset to why you’ve been cast.’ We all get to have these layers underneath that slowly emerge as we get closer to Elle.”

Looker, who steps into the role of the school rebel, agrees that Elle serves as a human wrecking ball to social stereotypes.

“Throwing Elle into that mix immediately tears it all apart,” Looker explains. “No matter how much somebody thinks they’re a cool rebel walking to the beat of his own drum, Elle shows up. My character initially responds to her with a little bit of trepidation and some judgment, but what breaks him outside of that cycle is seeing someone who is so willing to use their own voice—which is one of the things Dustin helps bring out in her.”

The cast’s individual storylines finally collided in a massive way during Episode 6, which features an homage to The Breakfast Club by trapping the ensemble together in the school library.

“That was so exciting to film because we all were in the same place, finally, for the first time,” Moskovitz notes. “Everyone had been building their own private relationship with Elle up until that point, and that was the first time we all got to act with each other.”

Looker added: “We spent four full days in the middle of summer locked in that library. The main thing we remember is this one specific shot looking straight up at us. I think the camera operators were able to count my nose hairs for me. You can see all of them.”

But if there is one behind-the-scenes story destined to be a permanent dinner-table conversation for the cast, it’s Moskovitz’s big track-and-field sequence in Episode 4.

“I felt that running sequence in my body for weeks,” Jacob groans.

“In the final edit, it looks very epic, in slow motion, with music swelling,” Looker chimes in instantly. “There was a background performer who was incredibly enthusiastic, but he clearly didn’t realize that Jacob’s character was meant to win the race. He was trying his absolute best to beat him!”

“He gave me a run for my money every single take!” Moskovitz laughs.

“So all I saw was Jacob just sprinting toward me, trying to win,” Looker cracks up. “The director, Sam, was trying to give him notes like, ‘Yeah, connect with Elle, have this moment with her as you’re winning the race,’ and Jacob is just like, ‘I am fighting for my life here!’“

Moskovitz grins, leaning back: “That is a true story. That was my Tom Cruise moment.”

By honoring the iconic, subverted rules of the original film franchise while injecting it with a modern sense of empathy and real-world camaraderie, ELLE manages to feel like both a warm, nostalgic hug and a vibrant step into the future. As this cast gears up to introduce the pink-hued, high-energy world of the 90s to audiences everywhere – with already a second season in tow – it’s safe to say we’re all ready to see how a goofy teen became an unstoppable global icon. What, like it’s hard? 

All episodes of ELLE premieres on July 1 on Prime Video

Images courtsey of Prime Video.