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 friends. Eventually, she reached a breaking point and decided to do something drastic: “I said, ‘Okay, I’ll dye my hair blonde and see if that’s something.’ You succeeded. Rafael got roles in prestigious projects such as Vice President and curb your enthusiasm, In the blockbuster studio comedy Blockersand Netflix guru Grace and Frankie. “It’s hard to know if it’s because I don’t care anymore, but I’ve found that I’m booking much more,” she says.
And now, Rafael is a star deerthe latest installment in Legally blonde universe. The 46-year-old actress plays Eva Woods, mother of Elle Woods, in the Prime Video series that follows the family as they struggle to fit in after moving from Los Angeles to peroxide-free Seattle in the 1990s. The role came to Raphael thanks to a relationship that developed in 2013 (during her brunette era); She filmed the pilot for the American reboot of Sharon Horgan’s series to withdrawalongside Jenny Slate and Kristen Schaal, then collaborated with director Jason Moore. The two kept in touch, and in early 2025 he sent her a text asking her to audition for Legally blonde Prequel. The next day, I got the scripts for all eight episodes of the first season.
“I haven’t seen a show like that since Gilmore Girls“It was a story of a mother and daughter that was loving and supportive, and without any of that weird competition,” says Rafael. I was like, I’m going to die to do this.
Over the next week, Raphael read with Moore, auditioned with Lexi Minetree (the newcomer who plays Elle Woods), officially got the job and moved to Vancouver to film. The role came with an audition deal, meaning potential actors needed to commit to a series contract before they could come and audition — something Raphael says she only felt comfortable doing because of assurances from production company Hello Sunshine. “I put a tremendous amount of trust and faith in that company, because I know how many women run the place,” says the actress, who has two children with husband Paul Scheer.League, Black Monday) and previously worked with Hello Sunshine Morning show. “They understand that when you hire a woman in her 40s, who comes to the role with all her life experience, you’re also hiring someone with a whole life that needs to be taken into account.”
Raphael has been in the comedy scene, across both coasts, since her days at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. There she met Casey Wilson, her best friend and longtime creative collaborator; The two first began performing together in the Upright Citizens Brigade, eventually creating the long-running two-woman show He rode hard and put away wet. The show earned them literary agents, and they spent their early years in the industry writing scripts such as the 2009 Anne Hathaway-Kate Hudson-led film. Bride Warsand broke through Sundance 2013 Ass backwards (Which they also starred in). During this period, Raphael developed a group of female comedians – Jessica St. Clair, Danielle Schneider, Lennon Parham, and Melissa Rauch – who she considered her best friends and main competition.
“Jess and I were auditioning for the ABC pilot together, and of course Anna showed up in loafers and she was wearing a stained tank top,” she says. “We were seeing other women coming in with full blowouts, and we felt like outsiders who didn’t have anything together, so we communicated about feeling like, ‘How do you do this?’ When they could have turned against each other, they turned toward each other, and their group chat often serves as a platform to share casting opportunities, offer each other jobs and comment on what they see in the industry, Rafael says. “I recently sent Jessica something that was proposed to me, and it really bothered me — I would never do that, but it helps to have someone else as a sounding board. Like, can you believe this?”
She has since built a separate business venture with St. Clair, launching their podcast Deep dive During the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently their members-only spin-off Deep Dive Academy. She balances the franchise alongside her longtime podcast How was this made?co-hosted by Cher and Jason Mantzoukas (St. Clair, a longtime friend and former comedy partner of Mantzoukas, is a frequent guest host). “We’ve been around so long that when we started podcasting, people would ask what station he was on,” Rafael laughs. “We’re very strategic about staying the course. We’re not going to turn it into a TV show. We’re not going to let it get bigger than our other projects. I’m too pretty cool to work on a podcast full-time.”
During the 2000s, Raphael also saw a lot of screenplays come with undesirable female roles. “There were a lot of roles, like the wife who was supporting the men’s comedy,” she says. The actress was often overlooked for these roles — this was before her blonde era — a fact she’s grateful for now. “The parts I got, they allowed me to ask to tell jokes. I could say, ‘This needs to be more straightforward, I need something funny to do here.’ This created a standard for myself.” This standard took her all the way to grace and frankie, Her longest on-screen job to date and a relic of a time when networks allowed TV sitcoms to build their own audiences and votes. On that set, Raphael became more of an artist — she began producing just weeks after giving birth to her first child (she gave birth to her second son between seasons two and three), and watched her on-screen mother Jane Fonda set a precedent for humility and openness. “I learned that the standard doesn’t have to be that, I did the scene right and everyone was happy, but I risked something of myself for the possibility of being wrong,” she says. “That’s one of the things I can offer this young group of actors deer. They didn’t ask me for guidance, but that doesn’t mean I won’t give it to them.”
The role of Eva Woods is a departure for Raphael, partly because of its substance. while deer Retaining the light and often whimsical comedic touches of its franchise predecessors, it’s more of a coming-of-age story than anything else. Elle was in high school when her parents moved to Seattle, and the first season follows her attempts to find a way in the Pacific Northwest, with the help of her mother. “I get a lot of offers for super intense characters like Brianna Grace and Frankie“But I wanted people to know that this softer side is available to me too,” says Raphael. “A lot of fans have come up to me and said: ‘We hope you do more dramatic roles.’ I don’t turn them down! It’s as if my parents were asking me: ‘Can you do one of the big films?’ I love it, guys.
deer It will run for at least two seasons — Prime Video released a renewal very quickly, and the cast has already completed filming Season 2 — and Raphael hopes it will be more than that. But she’s also looking forward to other passion projects, like a long-gestating pilot she’s been working on with Cher and Marta Kaufman (Friends, Grace and Frankie). Dinxabout a dual-income couple with no children, is a completely improvised sitcom that begins with a basic plot and then works on suggestions from the live audience. The pair shot one version for CBS, then another for Amazon, and are awaiting word on whether it will be picked up to series. “It’s literally an anti-AI show,” she says. “It’s incredibly innovative and cutting-edge, and it’s also the scariest thing I’ve ever done. We both always wanted to deliver This show and never do it again.”
Raphael says it was actually the original Legally blonde The film that helped her become comfortable with the idea of improvisation in the first place. “I felt like I couldn’t improvise because I didn’t know enough star wars “References and I didn’t want to wear sneakers on stage,” she says. When I first saw the film in theaters, it felt like a revelation. “Reese’s performance was like ‘Oh, you can be so feminine.’ and funny.’ Elle Woods raised me in a way, because she didn’t sell herself out.
