Working Girl Trivia
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49 free Working Girl trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Working Girl opens on the Staten Island Ferry with Carly Simon's 'Let the River Run' and ends on the same boat, with Tess McGill finally in an office of her own. In between, Mike Nichols turned Kevin Wade's corporate Cinderella story into a six-time Oscar nominee and a $103 million hit. This quiz covers the plot (the Trask radio deal, the broken leg, the borrowed wardrobe, the notebook left behind), the production (Molly Ringwald's audition, the 7 World Trade Center lobby, the day the shoot shut down), the awards, and the afterlife: the Sandra Bullock TV series, the Cyndi Lauper musical and the Hulu reboot. Every answer is explained, so you can settle who actually won what at the 1989 Oscars and Golden Globes.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Working Girl?
Mike Nichols
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.
Q 02Working Girl lost the Best Picture Oscar for 1988 to which film?
Rain Man
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.
Q 03Tess McGill commutes to her Wall Street job from which part of New York?
Staten Island
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.
Q 04Who plays Katharine Parker, Tess's scheming boss?
Sigourney Weaver
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.
Q 05Which star plays Jack Trainer, the dealmaker who teams up with Tess?
Harrison Ford
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.
Q 06How did Tess earn her business degree?
Through night school
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.
Q 07Tess loses her place with first boss David Lutz after doing what?
Posting insults about him on a VDT
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.
Q 08What is the name of the mergers-and-acquisitions firm where Tess works for Katharine?
Petty Marsh
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.
Q 09Tess's big idea is for Trask Industries to buy what?
A radio network
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.
Q 10How does Katharine Parker end up in hospital and away from the office?
A skiing accident
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.
Q 11What is the name of Tess's best friend who helps with her makeover?
Cyn
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.
Q 12Tess passes out in a cab after mixing alcohol with what?
Valium
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.
Q 13What does Tess accidentally leave at Katharine's apartment that exposes her deception?
Her notebook
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.
Q 21Working Girl star Melanie Griffith is the daughter of which Hitchcock leading lady?
Tippi Hedren
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.
Q 22Who beat Working Girl's Melanie Griffith to the Oscar?
Jodie Foster
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.
Q 23Two Working Girl performances were nominated in the same category at the Oscars; which one?
Actress in a Supporting Role
Q 14Katharine claims Jack follows a strict ethical code because he was once accused of what?
Stealing an idea
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.
Q 15How does Tess finally convince Oren Trask that the merger idea was hers?
An elevator pitch about its inspiration
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.
Q 16On her first day at Trask, Tess mistakes her new assistant Alice for whom?
Her supervisor
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.
Q 17Who wrote and performed 'Let the River Run', the theme song of Working Girl?
Carly Simon
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.
Q 18'Let the River Run' won its writer and singer which trio of major awards?
Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy
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.
Q 19In Working Girl's best-known line, Tess says she has "a head for business and a bod for" what?
Sin
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.
Q 20Which future Oscar winner has a brief early role as Bob Speck, the arbitrageur Tess is sent to meet?
Kevin Spacey
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.
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.
Q 24Which actress, fresh from an Oscar for Moonstruck, plays the personnel director who reassigns Tess?
Olympia Dukakis
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.
Q 25Before her Working Girl makeover, Tess declares that to be taken seriously you need serious what?
Hair
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.
Q 26Kevin Wade wrote Working Girl after seeing New York's career women doing what?
Walking in tennis shoes while carrying their heels
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.
Q 27The director read the Working Girl script while shooting which film in Arkansas?
Biloxi Blues
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.
Q 28Which Brat Pack star says she was 'too young' to land the lead in Working Girl?
Molly Ringwald
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.
Q 29Which studio made Working Girl?
20th Century Fox
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.
Q 30Why did the studio finally agree to cast the little-known Melanie Griffith as Tess in Working Girl?
Two bigger stars signed on
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.