Ten years ago, June Diane Raphael — a lifelong brunette — was struggling with auditions. She was constantly losing roles in the final round, often to her own friends. Eventually, she hit her breaking point and decided to do something drastic: “I was like, well fuck, I’ll just dye my hair blonde and see if that’s anything.” It worked. Raphael landed roles on prestige projects like Veep and Curb Your Enthusiasm, in the blockbuster studio comedy Blockers, and Netflix’s landmark Grace and Frankie. “It’s hard to know if it was because I just didn’t give a fuck anymore, but I did find I was booking so much more,” she says.
And now, Raphael is one of the stars of Elle, the latest installment in the Legally Blonde universe. The actress, 46, plays Eva Woods, mother to the titular Elle Woods, in the Prime Video series that follows the family as they struggle to assimilate after a move from Los Angeles to the notably peroxide-free ’90s-grunge-era Seattle. The role came to Raphael thanks to a connection forged in 2013 (during her brunette era); she’d filmed a pilot for an American reboot of the Sharon Horgan series Pulling, alongside Jenny Slate and Kristen Schaal, and hit it off with director Jason Moore. The two stayed in touch, and in early 2025 he sent her a text asking her to audition for the Legally Blonde prequel. The next day, she had the scripts for all eight episodes of the first season.
