Legally Blonde nearly ended with a potential romance between Elle Woods and Vivian Kensington, a member of the film’s cast has claimed.
Released in 2001 (and turning 25 this year), the romantic comedy centres around a sorority girl (Reese Witherspoon) who attends Harvard Law School in hope of winning back her ex-boyfriend.
In an oral history of the film for The New York Times, actor Jessica Cauffiel (who played one of Elle’s best friends, Margot) claimed that an early version of the film implied that Elle and her former nemesis Vivian (Selma Blair) may have ended up together at the end of the film.
However, audiences didn’t like the original ending, so it was reshot to instead show Elle graduating from law school.
“The first ending was Elle and Vivian in Hawaii in beach chairs, drinking margaritas and holding hands,” Cauffiel said. “The insinuation was either they were best friends or they had gotten together romantically.”
Actor Alanna Ubach, who played another friend of Elle’s called Serena, corroborated Cauffiel’s claims and said that she also remembered the scene.
However, the screenwriters told the NYT they never wrote that ending between Witherspoon and Blair, who also starred together in the 1999 film Cruel Intentions.
Elsewhere, Cauffiel also revealed that the original script was “very raunchy” and closer in tone to American Pie.
“What we know now as Legally Blonde, and what it began as are two completely different films. It transformed from nonstop zingers that were very adult in nature to this universal story of overcoming adversity by being oneself,” she said.
Screenwriter Karen McCullah added that in an earlier version of the script, Elle ended up with a professor.
