Rabat – Prime Video’s “Elle” is taking audiences back to the 1990s to meet Elle Woods long before she became the Harvard law student who made pink power suits and courtroom comebacks iconic.

The eight-episode series premiered on July 1, with the full first season dropping on Prime Video at once.

Set in 1995, Elle follows a 16-year-old Elle Woods as she navigates high school, friendships, first love and the challenges of growing up. 

The story begins in Bel-Air before Elle’s family unexpectedly moves to Seattle, placing the future fashion-loving lawyer in a completely different environment.

Lexi Minetree takes on the role of young Elle, with June Diane Raphael and Tom Everett Scott also starring. 

The series was developed by Laura Kittrell and Caroline Dries, with Reese Witherspoon, who originated the role, serving as an executive producer.

Rather than remake the original story, Elle works as a prequel, exploring the teenage experiences that helped shape the character audiences eventually came to know. 

And that means plenty of familiar elements, but with a very different setting and a younger Elle still figuring herself out.

Before ‘Elle,’ there was ‘Legally Blonde’

For fans meeting Elle Woods again, the story naturally goes back to 2001, when Reese Witherspoon first brought the character to the big screen in “Legally Blonde.”

Released in 2001, the film follows Elle after her boyfriend Warner breaks up with her because he does not believe she fits into the future he wants. 

Determined to prove him wrong, Elle gets into Harvard Law School and initially sets out to win him back.

But the story quickly becomes about much more than Warner.

Elle discovers that she is genuinely capable of succeeding at Harvard and begins proving that being fashionable, feminine, and unapologetically herself does not make her any less intelligent. 

The film ultimately turned her from a seemingly stereotypical blonde into one of the most recognizable female comedy characters of the early 2000s.

Now, 25 years after Witherspoon first played her, Elle is looking at the part of the story the original movie never showed.

Instead of asking what happened to Elle after she arrived at Harvard, the new series asks a more interesting question: what made Elle Woods become Elle Woods in the first place?