SPOILER ALERT: This story contains key plot details, including the ending, for “Elle,” now streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video.
Where most showrunners spend the days before their series’ debut worrying whether audiences will tune in, and whether they’ll ultimately get renewed, “Elle” bosses Laura Kittrell and Caroline Dries had a different problem: navigating the press without spoiling the already-shot Season 2.
In January, Amazon renewed the “Legally Blonde” prequel series, which follows Elle Woods in high school, that transformative period before the plucky co-ed applied for Harvard Law School and solved her first case by tapping into the fundamentals of perm maintenance. And the studio’s confidence was rewarded: Amazon reports that “Elle” was the most-viewed show on Prime Video in its first week of release.
“It has been quite a time,” Kittrell who created the show, said, joining Dries over Zoom on the eve of “Elle’s” July 1 debut. “Amazon wouldn’t want it any other way,” Dries joked.
“We are very lucky,” Kittrell added. “The two weeks leading up to the premiere, all our cast were in a panic, like, ‘Can we watch Season 1 again? We have no memory of what’s new, what’s old, what’s a spoiler, what’s not.’”
Indeed, there are plenty of twists and turns in Season 1. The Prime Video show takes audiences back to 1995, when Elle’s (newcomer Lexi Minetree) world gets flipped upside down as her family unexpectedly moves from Bel-Air to Seattle after her plastic surgeon father, Wyatt (Tom Everett Scott) botches a procedure. Much like her first days at Harvard, the peppy, pink-attired Elle struggles to fit in — this time, with the grunge-obsessed kids in the Pacific Northwest. The first season’s eight episodes — titled with quotes from the Reese Witherspoon-starring 2001 movie, like “Whoever Said Orange Is The New Pink Was Seriously Disturbed” — follow as Elle navigates her newfound friendships and crushes, while also uncovering a conspiracy over the misappropriation of school funds.
That’s where James Van Der Beek comes in.
The late TV star, whose name is synonymous with the millennial teen drama, “Dawson’s Creek,” joined “Elle” to play school superintendent and mayoral candidate Dean Wilson. Elle’s mother Eva (June Diane Raphael) — whose life is also thrown into chaos by the move — finds purpose in aiding in Wilson’s campaign, but it all turns out to be for naught when Elle reveals that he was the ringleader of the whole scheme.
“We were so flattered that he wanted to do this show to begin with,” Dries said of Van Der Beek. “Laura and I are such big fans of his, so just getting to work with someone who was a hero when I was growing up was a treat. And getting to watch him take a character and elevate it was so exciting as a writer.”
“Elle” executive producer Jason Moore had worked with the actor on four episodes of “Dawson’s Creek.’ “When his name was up on the audition, it was great. Since he turns out to be a bad guy, I was like ‘What fun for him,” Moore recently told Variety.
And the gig ultimately gave Van Der Beek, who was in treatment for Stage 3 colorectal cancer while filming, as much as he contributed to the crew behind the show. “It really is a time where I don’t feel my pain,” Moore says Van Der Beek told him about performing. “Focusing on work, I really actually am completely distracted, not only when the camera rolls, but just when I’m around all those people. As he got sick, he got really wanted to hold people close and bring people together. He was always really good at that.”
The role was to be the actor’s final performance. Van Der Beek died on February 11, 2026, at age 48. His work on the show was commemorated with a special dedication.
Read on as Kittrell and Dries break down more about the making of “Elle” Season 1 — from how Lexi Minetree channeled Witherspoon’s Elle Woods, the show’s ‘90s musical homages and “Breakfast Club” episode, and how Van Der Beek rewrote his character’s ending.
Lexi is an incredible find. It’s almost uncanny how much she has the mannerisms of Elle down — she practically transforms into Reese Witherspoon at times. What was the moment when you thought, “Oh, wow! This person is the reincarnation of Elle Woods.”
LAURA KITTRELL: It was day one. There are Elle-isms that we’ve given her that are intentional. Like, “Can you say this one thing from the movie?” and she nails those. It was one of the things I was the most stressed about going into making the show: “Oh my God, how are we going to be able to find this person?” And it’s one of the bigger questions people have before they watch: “Is she going to be able to do it?” It’s amazing now that people have started seeing it. I feel like 30 seconds in, people are like, “Oh, she’s got it, it’s fine,” and then you don’t worry about it anymore. That was the experience that we had on day one on set. It was just like, “Oh yeah, we’re good, we don’t have to worry about that part. Great!”