Reese Witherspoon Says She’s Done Making Certain Films And She’s Right

Comic Book reports that Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon’s production company, recently held its first Shine Away event—a mix between ComiCon and a high school job fair—where fans were invited to learn from entrepreneurs, athletes, authors, and celebrities. It was at the event that Witherspoon declared her intentions to turn toward the light and embrace positivity going forward.

I’m not meant to be doing dark, heavy, intense, horror, gore, darkness movies,” said Witherspoon.”People like to see me do light movies.

The Legally Blonde star went on to say that while making hopeful content “doesn’t put you in the cool kids club,” she doesn’t care and doesn’t want to be in the “cool kids club,” anyway. Reese Witherspoon admitted that she would rather “make optimistic stuff,” that gets girls “excited to be women in this world.”

A quick perusal of Witherspoon’s filmography on IMDb shows that the actress was really only ever in one dark, heavy, intense, horror, gore, darkness movie, American Psycho (2000). On the other hand, the actress’s most popular role to date is that of Elle Woods in the Legally Blonde franchise—an optimistic, bubbly personality—so perhaps she’s right to embrace that positive energy in future projects.

In the last decade, Reese Witherspoon has made just as big of a name for herself behind the camera as she has in front of it. The actress partnered with Seth Rodsky in 2016 to start Hello Sunshine and, since then, has been the driving force behind some of the hottest properties in Hollywood. Sunshine is responsible for HBO hit Big Little Lies (2017) as well as the Apple TV+ series The Morning Show (2019) and Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere (2020).

Interestingly enough, much of Hello Sunshine’s output has been rather dark in nature or, at the very least, not the positive, optimistic fare Reese Witherspoon claims she wants to produce. Big Little Lies revolves around a murder mystery, while Little Fires Everywhere is full of dark family secrets and intrigue. Meanwhile, The Morning Show is literally called Morning Wars in Australia because of the tumultuous nature of its subject matter.

Obviously, these shows were in production prior to Reese’s statement about abandoning “dark and gritty” projects going forward, but the fact that Witherspoon herself appears in several of Hello Sunshine’s successful yet downbeat productions puts at least one of her statements in question. Where did Reese Witherspoon get the idea she was ill-suited for “dark” or “intense” narratives?

To decide personally that she would rather only make happy content going forward is one thing. But to make it seem like her fans only like it when she does “light movies” seems kind of disingenuous. Unless, of course, Reese Witherspoon is saying that when it comes to beloved films like American Psycho and Election or popular shows Big Little Lies and Little Fires Everywhere, fans like everything about the projects except her, but that seems unlikely.

Regardless, the actress’s promise to bring more light to the darkness blanketing the world as of late is a noble one.