49 Fun Facts About Working Girl

Who directed Working Girl?

Mike Nichols. He refused to make the film without Melanie Griffith, then a risky choice for a lead, and threatened to walk away unless the studio hired her.

Working Girl lost the Best Picture Oscar for 1988 to which film?

Rain Man. It took four Oscars that night, but when New York Magazine later picked the best loser of every Best Picture race, its choice for that year was Working Girl.

Tess McGill commutes to her Wall Street job from which part of New York?

Staten Island. Her ferry ride to Wall Street opens the film, and the crew finished there too: the final sequence was shot aboard the ferry on the closing day of filming.

Who plays Katharine Parker, Tess's scheming boss?

Sigourney Weaver. She went to the Oscars with two nominations, for this role and for Gorillas in the Mist, and lost both, only weeks after winning Golden Globes for the pair.

Which star plays Jack Trainer, the dealmaker who teams up with Tess?

Harrison Ford. His rival for Tess in the film is played by Alec Baldwin, and four years later Ford took over from Baldwin as the CIA hero Jack Ryan in Patriot Games.

How did Tess earn her business degree?

Through night school. It took her five years and she finished with honours, yet when she applies for promotion she is still up against Harvard and Wharton graduates.

Tess loses her place with first boss David Lutz after doing what?

Posting insults about him on a VDT. Lutz had sent her to meet a colleague who wanted only cocaine and sex, so she called him a pimp on the office display and had to be placed elsewhere in the firm.

What is the name of the mergers-and-acquisitions firm where Tess works for Katharine?

Petty Marsh. No single building played the firm: its offices were pieced together from four Manhattan locations, among them a private club and the reading floor of a real brokerage.

Tess's big idea is for Trask Industries to buy what?

A radio network. Trask has been chasing television stations, but Tess argues that radio would also shield him from a Japanese takeover, because American law bars foreign owners from broadcasting.

How does Katharine Parker end up in hospital and away from the office?

A skiing accident. She breaks her leg on an Alpine trip where she expected a marriage proposal, and asks Tess to look after her home, which is where Tess finds out what her boss has been planning.

What is the name of Tess's best friend who helps with her makeover?

Cyn. Joan Cusack's character also delivers the film's warning that dressing up as an executive won't make Tess one, any more than dancing in her underwear makes Cyn Madonna.

Tess passes out in a cab after mixing alcohol with what?

Valium. Her best friend finds a jumbo bottle in Katharine's bathroom to steady Tess's nerves before the party, and when the tequila hits, Tess tells Jack she has only taken an antihistamine.

What does Tess accidentally leave at Katharine's apartment that exposes her deception?

Her notebook. Inside it Katharine finds Jack's phone number and the time of the Trask meeting, and she bursts in moments after the seller has agreed to the deal.

Katharine claims Jack follows a strict ethical code because he was once accused of what?

Stealing an idea. Katharine says he was once accused of lifting a plan to take a company private; when Tess asks him about it, Jack replies that nobody has ever accused him of any such thing.

How does Tess finally convince Oren Trask that the merger idea was hers?

An elevator pitch about its inspiration. Riding up with Trask, she shows him the magazine article and the gossip item she had put together; Katharine, asked the same question, cannot answer.

On her first day at Trask, Tess mistakes her new assistant Alice for whom?

Her supervisor. Tess sits down at the desk outside, taking the office for Alice's, and has to be told that the office is her own and that Alice is the one who works for her.

Who wrote and performed 'Let the River Run', the theme song of Working Girl?

Carly Simon. She has said she read the script and then the poems of Walt Whitman before writing it, aiming for a hymn to New York with a jungle beat underneath.

'Let the River Run' won its writer and singer which trio of major awards?

Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy. The Globe had to be shared: the vote tied with Two Hearts, Phil Collins's song from Buster, so both were named winners.

In Working Girl's best-known line, Tess says she has "a head for business and a bod for" what?

Sin. She says it to a stranger at a party she has crashed in one of her boss's cocktail dresses, not knowing he is the very man she has come to meet.

Which future Oscar winner has a brief early role as Bob Speck, the arbitrageur Tess is sent to meet?

Kevin Spacey. His character collects Tess in a limousine and starts snorting cocaine on the back seat, seven years before The Usual Suspects won the actor his first Oscar.

Working Girl star Melanie Griffith is the daughter of which Hitchcock leading lady?

Tippi Hedren. The star of The Birds turned out to be the first of three generations of leading ladies: Griffith's own daughter is the actress Dakota Johnson.

Who beat Working Girl's Melanie Griffith to the Oscar?

Jodie Foster. The Accused had only that one nomination, while Working Girl arrived at the ceremony with six and went home with a single Oscar.

Two Working Girl performances were nominated in the same category at the Oscars; which one?

Actress in a Supporting Role. The best friend and the boss were both nominated, and both lost on the night to Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist.

Which actress, fresh from an Oscar for Moonstruck, plays the personnel director who reassigns Tess?

Olympia Dukakis. Her character, Ruth, reminds Tess that this is the third time in six months she has had to place her, then gives her one last chance, in mergers and acquisitions.

Before her Working Girl makeover, Tess declares that to be taken seriously you need serious what?

Hair. With that, her best friend cuts off the big teased hairdo, the first step in passing Tess off as an executive in her boss's borrowed clothes.

Kevin Wade wrote Working Girl after seeing New York's career women doing what?

Walking in tennis shoes while carrying their heels. The sight went straight into the film: Tess arrives at her desk in her commuting trainers and changes into high heels.

The director read the Working Girl script while shooting which film in Arkansas?

Biloxi Blues. The wartime army comedy is set in Mississippi but was filmed in Arkansas, and its director agreed to make Working Girl before he had finished shooting it.

Which Brat Pack star says she was 'too young' to land the lead in Working Girl?

Molly Ringwald. Barely out of her teens and of John Hughes's high-school films, she says the same verdict later cost her The Silence of the Lambs as well.

Which studio made Working Girl?

20th Century Fox. The studio liked its hit enough to spin it off: within two years its television arm had turned Working Girl into a sitcom for NBC.

Why did the studio finally agree to cast the little-known Melanie Griffith as Tess in Working Girl?

Two bigger stars signed on. The studio wanted the insurance of proven box-office names, so although Griffith plays the lead she was billed only third.

To put her idea to Oren Trask in person, Tess gatecrashes which family occasion?

His daughter's wedding. She reasons that nobody at a big reception will admit to not knowing her, and Jack delivers her to Trask by switching partners with him on the dance floor.

Before Working Girl, Melanie Griffith was best known for Body Double and which Jonathan Demme comedy?

Something Wild. One leading critic argued that those racier parts helped her here, because the actress and her character were both trying to be taken seriously.

The lobby of which building, later destroyed on 9/11, doubled as part of Tess's firm's offices?

7 World Trade Center. It came down hours after the Twin Towers, at about 5:20 that afternoon, and because it had long been evacuated nobody was killed in its collapse.

After Melanie Griffith arrived high on set, what did her director make her do?

Pay for the lost day. Filming was shut down, the incident was kept from the studio and she was handed a bill for $80,000; three weeks after the shoot ended she checked into rehab.

On meeting her new boss Katharine, Tess is surprised to learn that Katharine is what?

Slightly younger than she is. Tess has just turned 30 and Katharine has not quite got there, so Katharine cheerfully calls them practically twins, though one has the office and the other the desk outside it.

Which cartoon short played before Working Girl on its 1989 VHS release?

A Simpsons short. "Family Portrait", made for The Tracey Ullman Show, went out on the tape before the family had a series of their own, which did not begin until that December.

When Mick proposes to Tess in front of their friends, what one-word answer does she give?

"Maybe". He storms out calling it a humiliation, and when he demands a straight answer she tells him she is not steak and cannot simply be ordered.

Which critic gave Working Girl four stars and said its plot was 'put together like clockwork'?

Roger Ebert. He added that the comedy sneaks up on its audience: by the final scenes, he wrote, it plays like a thriller, which works because nobody was braced for one.

Which future star of a 1990s science-fiction series is glimpsed as a guest at Tess's birthday party?

David Duchovny. He had been working towards a Yale doctorate in English literature when acting jobs began to come; he never finished it, and five years after this film he was starring in The X-Files.

Who played Tess McGill in the short-lived 1990 NBC TV series?

Sandra Bullock. The sitcom was gone within four months, with four of its twelve episodes never shown, and she had to wait another four years for Speed to make her a star.

Which pop star wrote the score for the stage musical of Working Girl?

Cyndi Lauper. She wrote both the music and the lyrics, but the show was slow to arrive: announced in 2017, it reached the stage only in late 2025, with a book by Theresa Rebeck.

Working Girl's producer, Douglas Wick, lost Best Picture in 1989 but won it twelve years later for which epic?

Gladiator. Working Girl was the first film he produced on his own, from an idea he and the writer Kevin Wade had come up with together on a visit to New York in 1984.

A Working Girl reboot announced in 2022 was reported as likely to premiere on which streaming service?

Hulu. Selena Gomez, already the star of Hulu's Only Murders in the Building, was reported to be in final talks to produce the remake, with Ilana Peña adapting the script.

What does Tess discover her live-in boyfriend doing when she returns home from house-sitting?

Having sex with another woman. She walks out, spends the night at Katharine's empty apartment and the next morning starts passing herself off as an executive.

When Katharine crashes the merger meeting, what does she reveal about Tess?

That she is her secretary. Tess has let everyone in the room, Jack included, go on believing she is an executive, so she can only apologise and walk out.

At the start of Working Girl, Tess learns she has again been turned down for what?

The trainee programme. Her bosses soften the blow by sending her to meet a colleague in arbitrage who is supposedly hiring, an introduction that turns out to be no favour at all.

Alongside an emerging-markets seminar, which class is Tess taking as Working Girl begins?

Speech. As one leading critic put it, she still talks in the little-girl voice she adopted at 11, and she knows that nobody in finance will take it seriously.

Which Tom Hanks comedy did Working Girl beat to the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy?

Big. Hanks still collected the comedy acting prize that night, but the film award went to Working Girl, which won more Golden Globes than any other picture.

What does Tess discover about Jack and her boss Katharine after she and Jack become involved?

They are a couple. Jack mentions that the girlfriend he means to leave is laid up in hospital, and Tess realises exactly who she is and rushes out.