SPOILER ALERT: This story contains key plot details, including the ending, from “Elle,” now streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video.

While most showrunners spend the days leading up to their series’ debut worrying about whether audiences will tune in and whether they’ll ultimately be renewed, “Elle” bosses Laura Kittrell and Caroline Dries had a different problem: navigating the press without spoiling the already-filmed Season 2.

In January, Amazon renewed the prequel series “Legally Blonde,” which follows Elle Woods through high school, that transformative period before the plucky student applied to Harvard Law School and solved her first case by leveraging the fundamentals of perm maintenance. And the studio’s confidence was rewarded: Amazon reports that “Elle” was the most-watched show on Prime Video in its first week of release.

“It’s been a great time,” said Kittrell, who created the show, joining Dries via Zoom on the eve of “Elle”’s July 1 debut. “Amazon wouldn’t have it any other way,” Dries joked.

“We’re very fortunate,” Kittrell added. “The two weeks before the premiere, our entire cast was panicking, like, ‘Can we watch season 1 again? We don’t remember what’s new, what’s old, what’s a spoiler and what’s not.'”

In fact, 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 is turned upside down when her family unexpectedly moves from Bel-Air to Seattle after her plastic surgeon father, Wyatt (Tom Everett Scott), botches a procedure. Just like her early days at Harvard, cheerful, pink-clad Elle struggles to fit in, this time with the grunge-obsessed kids of the Pacific Northwest. The eight episodes of the first season, titled with quotes from the 2001 film starring Reese Witherspoon, such as “Whoever said orange is the new pink was seriously disturbed,” follow Elle as she navigates her new friendships and loves, while uncovering a conspiracy about the embezzlement 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 helping Wilson’s campaign, but it all comes to nothing when Elle reveals that he was the ringleader of the entire scheme.

“To begin with, we were very flattered that he wanted to do this show,” Dries said of Van Der Beek. “Laura and I are big fans of his, so working with someone who was a hero when I was a kid was a pleasure. And seeing him take a character and elevate it was very exciting as a writer.”

“Elle” executive producer Jason Moore had worked with the actor on four episodes of “Dawson’s Creek.” “When his name came up in the audition, it was cool. Because he turns out to be a bad guy, I thought, ‘How funny for him,'” Moore said recently. Variety.

And the gig ultimately gave Van Der Beek, who was undergoing treatment for stage 3 colorectal cancer while filming, as much as he contributed to the team behind the show. “It really is a moment where I feel no pain,” Moore says Van Der Beek told him about his performance. “By concentrating on work, I really get completely distracted, not only when the camera is rolling, but also when I’m surrounded by all those people. When he got sick, he really wanted to have people around and bring them together. He was always very good at that.”

The role was to be the actor’s last performance. Van Der Beek died on February 11, 2026, aged 48. His work on the program was commemorated with a special dedication.

Read on as Kittrell and Dries discuss more about the making of “Elle” Season 1, from how Lexi Minetree channeled Witherspoon’s Elle Woods, the ’90s show’s musical homages and the episode “Breakfast Club,” and how Van Der Beek rewrote her character’s ending.

Lexi is an amazing find. It’s almost astonishing how much Elle masters her mannerisms: at times she practically transforms into Reese Witherspoon. What was the moment you thought, “Oh wow! This person is the reincarnation of Elle Woods.”

LAURA KITTREL: It was the first day. There are Elleisms that we have given that are intentional. Like, “Can you say something about the movie?” and she nails them. It was one of the things that stressed me out the most when I started doing the show: “Oh my God, how are we going to be able to find this person?” And it’s one of the biggest questions people ask before watching: “Can he do it?” It’s amazing now that people have started to see it. I feel like after 30 seconds people say, “Oh, she’s got it, she’s fine,” and then you don’t worry about it anymore. That was the experience we had the first day on set. It was like, “Oh yeah, we’re fine, we don’t have to worry about that part. Great!”