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‘Legally Blonde 3’ Is Still Happening, Says Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling works hard. As head of the production company Kaling International, she’s juggling nearly two dozen projects in various stages, including the Netflix hit Never Have I EverHBO Max Romp The College girls’ sexual lives. Kaling works as an editor on a highly-publicized project in addition to her production duties. Legally Blonde 3. To quote its iconic protagonist, the ever-optimistic lawyer Elle Woods played by Reese Witherspoon, “What, like it’s hard?”

The good news is that getting the right new model can be a challenge. Legally Blonde Kaling admitted that it can be difficult movie-making. Kaling, her co-writer and director of photography, have delayed the film’s premiere, which was originally scheduled for spring 2022. Brooklyn Nine-Nine’Dan Goor and Kaling work on the script. Kaling said they wanted to do justice to both the original and sequel films.

Continue reading:Mindy Kaling’s Top Tips for Making Great TV

“We don’t want to be responsible for ruining what’s basically Reese’s Avengers franchise,” Kaling says, speaking to TIME for The 100 Most Influential Companies of 2022. Kaling was asked by Witherspoon to create the screenplay and she agreed to another entry in 2018. Kaling said that the script was not complete but she teased some of the ideas she and Goor were exploring. “What is Elle Woods like at 42?” she asks. “Does she end up becoming all the things she wanted? Is that a personality she possesses as a mature woman? Are her views more negative? Her brightness and her cheerfulness really worked when she was 22, but how has life changed her perspective on things?”

The task of updating a beloved 2000s character for 2020 is difficult. There have been recent attempts to bring back old favourite franchises like “The Simpsons”. Sex and the City Continuation Just like thatcritics, and divided audiences. Kaling is an avid fan of the original Sex and the City “I always felt very protective of the show because the men I knew in comedy at the time had a dismissive feeling about it,” she says. “It was off-putting to a certain kind of man that these women were in their thirties, unmarried, wearing expensive, beautiful clothes that men didn’t have to buy for them. They were highly educated. They were also completely independent sexually. I loved that as a very repressed kid, sexually.”

In the 24 years since the original series’ debut, Kaling, like many fans of the show, has reckoned with its weaknesses, including its lack of BIPOC cast members. “Obviously, the original could have been more inclusive,” she says. “I think both those thing can exist. You can really enjoy something and see its flaws.”

For her,Just like thatThis served to warn fans of the speed with which beloved characters can be resented. Kaling had difficulty with the new show. She felt that Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte were apologizing for the original’s transgressions. Many critics point out that many of the characters are inauthentic. It’s as Simple As ThatIt was as if they had been frozen in 2004, but then they would regain their consciousness in 2022 to catch up with everything in society. Three white, wealthy women were always making social faux pas about class, race and gender.

Kaling claims she was forced to bow before Kaling It’s as Simple As That binge after two episodes—in part because its challenges felt too close to her struggle with the Legally Blonde project. “I found it was too uncomfortable to watch,” she says. “I felt like I could commiserate with the producers and the writers of the show, trying to address all these issues from the past, and be funny and fabulous, but also sort of apologize for itself.”

Elle Woods’s update has given her some insight into the possible pitfalls. “The hardest thing about this project is trying to figure that out in an authentic way,” she says. “Honestly, watching It’s as Simple As That, and how they took a character from 18 years ago, and how the character was now—we want to make sure that Elle Woods is not paying penance for existing in the year 2022.”

Kaling says that it will happen while Legally Blonde 3While the film will recognize that things have changed in the past decade, Elle Woods will be the focus of the movie. “We’re not afraid of the character in this world, and we don’t feel we have to apologize for her. As a fan, I didn’t want to watch her be canceled or become a Karen. So the character is just fun,” she says. “That’s what’s been interesting and challenging—and why it’s taking us such a long time to write.”

Here are more must-read stories from TIME


To Eliana Dockterman at eliana.dockterman@time.com.

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