Luke Wilson Says Reese Witherspoon Inspired Him to Bring His A-Game to Legally Blonde (Exclusive)

Despite having starred in quite a few romantic comedies, Luke Wilson doesn’t consider the genre his own.

Signing the 2001 Reese Witherspoon classic Legal blonde, exclusively to PEOPLE, the actor remembers it as “one of those things where I thought, ‘It’s a romantic comedy, it’s not really my taste, but it’s going to be fun to work with Reese. It seems great.’ ”

Wilson, 52, calls himself “a real Reese fan from Elections,” her 1999 satire about a type-A high school student running for class president. “She was great at it, a real force in a way. It’s harder than it looks, I think, to act like a teenager and be realistic.”

Reese Witherspoon reflects on Elections25th Anniversary: ​​’I Never Dropped That Character’ (Exclusive)

Then came Elle Woods. Witherspoon, now 48, directed director Robert Luketic and screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith Legal blonde as a SoCal sorority girl who became a star at Harvard Law School and stormed into courtrooms in all-pink dresses at the end of the story.

“The first day I saw her in the dressing room, and the way she was talking and holding herself, I just thought, ‘Okay, now I have to concentrate. She really does something and works hard and makes a real character out of it,’ recalls Wilson, who played Emmett Richmond, a lawyer and Elle’s eventual love interest.

“I think people take it for granted,” he says of the Witherspoon portrait. On paper, the character could have been “a Saturday night live sketch.”

Luke Wilson at the premiere of Legally Blonde 2.

Gordon M. Grant / Alamy Stock Photo

But the actress mastered Elle’s “exaggerated” mannerisms so much, and yet gave her such depth, she reminded the Dallas resident “of people I met in Texas: just very honest, they know what they want, very direct and ambitious, but also sweet and kind. And have these clothes and hair and nails and things like that.”

At the start of filming, Wilson recalls thinking, “She’s doing something really, really cool, and I better bend down and do a good job of playing an honest man alongside her, to serve her character.”

The Wilson Brothers: All about Owen, Luke and Andrew

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Wilson and Witherspoon reprized their roles in 2003 Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blue — in which their characters got married — and the third Legal blonde The film has since reportedly been in the works with Mindy Kaling and Dan Goor as screenwriters.

Asked for any information, Wilson said he had “not heard anything about” a second sequel. “We had a Zoom meeting a year or two ago,” he says, adding on reflection, “It wasn’t a movie meeting… I don’t know what it was, but it was great to see [Witherspoon] and other actors.”

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blue.

MGM/Courtesy Everett

Reese Witherspoon Says ‘There Is No ‘True Blonde 3’ Without Jennifer Coolidge”

For Wilson, Legal blonde it will always have a special place in his heart. “I’ve met women who watched it when they were kids, and now they have kids watching it, and I find it very funny,” he says.

Wilson’s next project is definitely not a romcom: he plays a frontiersman in writer-director-star Kevin Costner’s western epic Horizon. It’s a saga Chapter 1 is in theaters June 28 with 2. Chapter next on August 16.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education