Trivia / Working Girl

• 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 goodness. Plus, a number of the supporting actors and minor players are still quite active and recognizable today.
• 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). It didn't go unnoticed in MAD's satire "Lurking Girl," in the panel where "Junk" meets up with "Tush" in a bar and asks her to come home with him "in a totally unnecessary scene":
  Tush: What's in it for me?
  Junk: For YOU — nothing! For ME — a desperate attempt to justify my top billing in this lousy film!
  • 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.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Alec Baldwin was initially cast as Jack Trainer before Harrison Ford got the part.
• 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. However, the fact that Weaver's character seems much older than she is in comparison to Tess is intentional.
• The Other Marty: Kevin Spacey was brought in as a last-minute replacement for another actor in the part of Bob Speck. On the day the scene was shot, Mike Nichols, who had previously directed Spacey in Heartburn, sent a car to Spacey's New York apartment, with a copy of the script in the back seat. Spacey learned his lines while on the way to the shoot. Nichols was under pressure to finish the scene so he wouldn't have to postpone his wedding to Diane Sawyer two days later. Years later, when Spacey became a producer on The Social Network, he gave a part to Dakota Johnson, who is the real-life daughter of Melanie Griffith.
• Star-Making Role: For Melanie Griffith as this film earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and helped shoot her straight into the A-list going into the 1990s.
• Throw It In!: In one montage there's a shot of Tess vacuuming Katherine's apartment. It's such a distant shot it's hard to tell, but she's wearing nothing but a pair of blue panties at the time. Melanie Griffith suggested it to the director because it was something she often did at home. (this really is Truth in Television for some women, who say it's easier to wash off dirt and dust from themselves than clothing, not to mention that housework can actually be quite a workout and make you hot and sweaty)
• What Could Have Been:
  • Kim Basinger, Cher, Whoopi Goldberg, Goldie Hawn, Shelley Long, Catherine O'Hara, Meryl Streep and Kathleen Turner were considered for the role of Katherine.
  • Lorraine Bracco, Geena Davis, Carrie Fisher, Shelley Long and Michelle Pfeiffer, were considered for the role of Tess.

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