Reese Witherspoon Says She Was 'Upset' By Jury Duty Experience: 'People Don't Know Much About the Law'

Reese Witherspoon is encouraging people to take jury duty seriously because "some bad stuff goes down there," including confusion from her fellow jurors about her legal background.
The actress, 48, appeared alongside her "You're Cordially Invited" co-star Will Ferrell, 57, on Friday's episode of "The Graham Norton Show," and shared her thoughts on what it was like serving on a jury.
"Well listen, I did not want to do jury duty," Witherspoon told Norton, 61. "But I remember it was after 'Legally Blonde'. It was probably like seven years after 'Legally Blonde', I got called for jury duty and it was in Beverly Hills."
Witherspoon felt sure she would not be selected for the jury, but she was wrong.
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"I thought, 'Surely they're not gonna pick me.' They picked me for a long trial, y'all. It was probably two weeks. I was on the jury," she said.
"That's not that long," Ferrell said. "I thought you were going to say a month."
"No listen, it was two solid weeks every day going in," Witherspoon said. "And I was watching it and it was a dog bite case but it was very clear, I was very invested in this case."
When it came time to deliberate, the jurors chose Witherspoon as their foreperson.
"We went to deliberation and so at the very end they say, 'Okay, well somebody in this group has to be the foreman' and they all unanimously are like, 'Her'," Witherspoon said. The group said they picked her because she "went to law school."
"I was like, 'Y'all this is really upsetting. I definitely did not go to law school, I didn't finish college'," she said. "I played a lawyer in a movie once but they fully made me the foreman and I started realizing people don't know much about the law."
She said that some jurors believed the defendant was guilty because they didn't like "the way she looked." The case revolved around a neighbor who sued the owner of a dog that bit her hand.
But "this other lady put her hand in a dog fight," Witherspoon said. "What did your mother always tell you, don't put your hand in a dog fight."
"The Morning Show" star urged fans to take jury duty seriously.
"If you get picked for jury duty, please do it," she said. "Some bad stuff goes down there."
-- With reporting by TMX