Exclusive | Why playing Reese Witherspoons bad boyfriend on Legally Blonde scrambled Matthew Davis head

He’s pop culture’s ultimate bad boyfriend. “Legally Blonde” star Matthew Davis, who played Warner Huntington III, exclusively told The Post that he “had no clue” the 2001 movie would become such a phenomenon when they initially shot it.“I was 22 or 23 when I shot the film, and I had no clue what it was going to go on to become all these years later — to have it be such a cultural phenomenon that touched so many people’s lives,” the 48-year-old gushed.Davis played Warner, Elle Woods’ (Reese Witherspoon) boyfriend who dumped her at the beginning of the movie as he went on to Harvard Law School.Claiming that she wasn’t “serious” enough to date, he was aghast when Elle followed him to law school.Going down memory lane for the flick’s 25th anniversary, “The Vampire Diaries” actor told The Post that he recalls trying to “do [his] best to keep up, and stay out of the way” as a scene partner to Witherspoon. “The very first scene I shot with Reese was the breakup scene in the restaurant,” he revealed, noting that he prepared for it to the best of his “limited ability at the time as a very young actor.

“I thought I had a grasp on what it was,” he added.“[But] when I showed up to set, I didn’t see Reese.

I saw Elle.I saw this force of nature.”At the time, Witherspoon had already starred in hits like “Fear” and “Cruel Intentions,” while “Legally Blonde” was one of Davis’s first roles. Watching the more experienced actress, he realized that he “needed to throw away everything that [he] thought [he] was doing.

“It scrambled my mind at the time….it became like a minor existential crisis,” he quipped, explaining that his only thought during the filming was to “just keep up.” “‘Just keep up with her, and you’ll be fine.’ And I just remember surrendering everything I had to just match what she was doing,” he added.The “Legacies” actor said that, to this day, people regularly come up t...