Reese Witherspoon was chosen to be foreperson by her fellow jurors because of Legally Blonde: "I definitely did not go to law school"

Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde
(Image credit: MGM/20th Century Studios)

Reese Witherspoon has shared that, when she did jury duty, her fellow jurors wanted her to be foreperson because of Legally Blonde.

"I did not want to do jury duty," Witherspoon said on the Graham Norton Show. "It was probably seven years after Legally Blonde, I got called for jury duty. And it was in Beverly Hills, and I thought, 'Surely they're not gonna pick me.' They picked me for a long trial, y'all. It was like, probably two weeks."

When it came time to choose a foreperson, "they all unanimously were like, 'her' – me!" she added. "I was like, 'Why did you pick me?' And 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,'" she recalled. "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."

Legally Blonde revolves around Witherspoon's Elle Woods, a girl with a passion for pink who goes to Harvard Law School in the hopes of winning back her ex-boyfriend. In the process, she proves herself as a skilled lawyer in her own right.

The movie, based on the book of the same name by Amanda Brown, has been turned into a stage musical, with a prequel show on the way from Amazon Prime Video titled Elle. The movie also has a sequel that stars Witherspoon, titled Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, while a third movie has been in development since 2018.

While you wait for Elle, you can fill out your watchlist with our guide to all the most exciting upcoming movies and upcoming TV shows of the year.

Molly Edwards
Senior Entertainment Writer

I'm a Senior Entertainment Writer here at 12DOVE, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.