Jennifer Coolidge Needs Legally Blonde 3 To Happen So She Stops Getting Hot Dog Jokes

Jennifer Coolidge doesn’t want a hot dog anymore. In a new interview on The Jess Cagle Show, the Emmy-nominated actor revealed that she wants Legally Blonde 3 to happen for this hilarious reason: she needs the Fourth of July jokes to stop. In the first sequel to the hit 2001 movie, Coolidge’s character Paulette sees Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods in a very patriotic outfit, leading to her now-iconic line: “Oh my god, you look like the Fourth of July. Makes me want a hot dog real bad.” Now, Coolidge thinks it’s too iconic, and needs the drag queens to stop harassing her with hot dogs.

“When it’s the Fourth of July, I get thousands and thousands of texts and videos of people doing the Fourth of July [scene], you know,” she explained. “Men, women, these TikTokers, and then lots of drag queens send me these funny videos and do these weird things with the vegan hot dogs, and all this stuff.”

Therefore, Coolidge thinks she needs to reprise Paulette once again to give those queens (and herself) some new inspiration — and she needs it to happen ASAP. “It could be maybe some other holiday we could take advantage of,” she suggested. “I really felt like this year, I was like, okay, alright. I've really done this Fourth of July thing and I'm gonna have to insist to Reese that we make it this year because I'm not gonna make it... I can't do it next year. I can't. I need new material.”

That said, the White Lotus star is still appreciative of the drag queens who impersonate her, remarking that “they’re funnier than I am.” “They do me better than I can do myself, and I love them for it,” she said. “But I feel like their shtick is getting limited when they do it. We should give them a new thing that no one's even thought of.”

Witherspoon announced that Legally Blonde 3 was officially happening in 2018, and Mindy Kaling was brought on as a co-writer two years later, with a planned theatrical release in May 2022. While that date has come and gone, Witherspoon promised that the film is still being perfected, telling USA Today in July that Top Gun: Maverick provided new ideas. “They waited a long time to make another version of that movie, and I loved the nostalgia piece they incorporated in it,” she said. “So definitely that gave us a lot of inspiration about what we would want to do with Elle Woods and make sure that we had all those same touchstones that mattered to people [back] then.”

If Witherspoon or Kaling get writers’ block, then Coolidge has some ideas of her own, telling E! on the 2021 Emmy Awards red carpet in September that she wants Legally Blonde 3 to be a thriller of sorts. “I hope Reese and I are running really fast for most of it — running from something really fast,” she said. “I just hope it's some real fast-moving caper type; that we get into trouble and stuff.” Thelma and Louise would have nothing on Elle and Paulette.