Elle Woods Didn’t Go To Harvard In The Legally Blonde Book

Before Legally Blonde was a movie or a musical, it was a book by Amanda Brown. And, we've just learned, the story we know and love departs from the original in one major way: Elle Woods had no ambitions of attending Harvard Law School. Instead, she went to the University of Southern California and Stanford in the book — but those schools didn't want to be associated with the movie. A USC representative told Vulture that there was "too much stereotyping going on." The producers then reached out to UCLA, Yale, and the University of Chicago — which also wanted nothing to do with Elle Woods. Finally, Harvard agreed to being mentioned in the movie, but it still didn't welcome Elle onto its campus. The filming had to take place at USC and UCLA. So, if the setting looks uncharacteristically sunny for Massachusetts, that's because it was actually in California. It sounds like the producers took a lesson in perseverance from Elle Woods herself to pull this off. Even when they didn't seem to belong anywhere, they managed to gain Harvard's acceptance.