Working Girl/Trivia

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When Working Girl came out at Christmastime of 1988, the film really had only two headlining stars: Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver. The film provided a Star-Making Role for Melanie Griffith (whose star has since faded somewhat), and lead supporting actor Alec Baldwin was in the process of becoming a minor star over the course of several films. As you will see below, however, the film is a gold mine of Retroactive Recognition and Hey, It's That Guy! goodness.

• Actor Allusion: Katharine (Sigourney Weaver) steps off the helicopter carrying a giant stuffed gorilla. Earlier in 1988, Weaver starred in Gorillas in The Mist.
• All-Star Cast: By means of Retroactive Recognition. Only Ford and Weaver were big stars at the time, but the film is a gold mine of Retroactive Recognition and Hey, It's That Guy! goodness. Plus, a number of the supporting actors and minor players are still quite active and recognizable today. See the Trivia page for more details.
• Billing Displacement: Lead Melanie Griffith gets third place in the film, behind bigger names Harrison Ford (doesn't appear until about a half hour in) and Sigourney Weaver (shelved during Act 2).
  • Diagonal Billing: Harrison Ford, the biggest star, takes the upper-left billing slot on the box art and film posters while lead Melanie Griffith takes the lower but center position. As a star name but supporting character to both, Sigourney Weaver is on the same billing plane as Ford, above Griffith, but on their right.
• Dawson Casting: A very borderline example of this trope. When Tess and Katharine first meet, Tess has just celebrated her 30th birthday a few days earlier, while Katharine is turning 30 the following week. Melanie Griffith was actually 30 at the time of filming, but Sigourney Weaver was 38, and her character looks, sounds, and acts substantially older than Griffith's. Of course, given Katharine's incredible vanity, she could very well be lying about her age.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Several!
  • FBI Director Larry Moss, from Season 7 of 24, in which he was Renee Walker's boss, is also a guest at Tess's birthday party.
  • Jim, the junior executive who comes on to Katharine at her office party, is Edward Norton's boss in Fight Club.
  • Tess's secretary near the end of the movie has shown up in a lot of recurring roles on television, including, but by no means limited to, Picket Fences, Judging Amy, Freaks and Geeks, Felicity, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Crossing Jordan, Everybody Loves Raymond, CSI, ER, Prison Break, Monk, Brothers and Sisters, Big Love, and most recently Harry's Law. Let's not even get started on the number of one-off roles she's done. At the time of Working Girl, her only other credits were Moonstruck and the short-lived NBC sitcom Easy Street with Loni Anderson.
  • Doreen is Joe Pesci's girlfriend at the Copa in Goodfellas. She's the one who almost gives Pesci a heart attack when she talks about how a girl could find a talented black singer like Sammy Davis Jr. attractive.
  • Oren Trask is Hollis Nye from Damages and Judge Joseph P. Terhune from Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
  • Bitsy, the heavyset bridesmaid with whom Harrison Ford dances in order to let Tess talk to Oren Trask, is Kathy Geiss from 30 Rock and Mayor Sue Hallinan on The Onion News Network.
• Certified Crowning Music Of Awesome: Carly Simon won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a Grammy for "Let the River Run". At the time it was the only song ever to win all three awards. As of 2011, the only other song to achieve this was "Streets of Philadelphia" by Bruce Springsteen.
• The Actor Swap Is Coming...: Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin are the two male leads in this film. Less than three and a half years after Working Girl, both actors had played CIA analyst Jack Ryan in separate adaptations of Tom Clancy novels.
• Star-Making Role: For Melanie Griffith.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Meryl Streep, Robin Duke, Ellen Barkin, Kim Basinger, Catherine O'Hara, Kathleen Turner, Cher, Goldie Hawn, Whoopi Goldberg, Debra Winger, and Shelley Long were considered for the role of Katherine.
  • Michelle Pfeiffer, Brooke Shields, Geena Davis, Carrie Fisher and Lorraine Bracco were considered for the role of Tess.