Working Girl (1988) on Netflix
Tess McGill, a Staten Island secretary, pitches an idea that her boss Katharine Parker dismisses. When Katharine breaks her leg skiing, Tess takes over her job.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.8/1068,724 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
Tess McGill comes from Staten Island, holds a business degree from night school, and works as a secretary in lower Manhattan while hoping to reach an executive position. Her boss and male coworkers profit from her intelligence yet treat her badly. When her boss humiliates her once more, she types her opinion of him onto a video display terminal and is fired. Her next post is assisting Katharine Parker, an associate partner at Petty Marsh who invites her to share ideas. Tess proposes a radio network purchase by Trask Industries, and Katharine says it would not work. Katharine breaks her leg skiing and asks Tess to house-sit while she is in the hospital.
Cast
- James Lallyas Turkel
Show all 20 cast
- Georgienne Millenas Tess's Birthday Party Friend
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Working Girl (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film's opening sequence follows Manhattan-bound commuters on the Staten Island Ferry accompanied by Carly Simon's song "Let the River Run", for which she received the Academy Award, the Golden Globe and a Grammy, making her the first artist to win this trio of awards for a song composed, written and performed by a single artist.
- Molly Ringwald auditioned but was deemed "too young"; Mike Nichols was so determined for Griffith to have the part that he threatened to drop out of the production if the studio, 20th Century Fox, would not hire her.
- Three weeks after filming was completed, Griffith entered a rehabilitation facility to receive treatment for her addiction; according to the biography Mike Nichols: A Life, written by Mark Harris, Nichols had been battling a cocaine addiction of his own around the same time.
- Throughout the shoot Griffith was struggling with a years-long alcohol and cocaine addiction, which at times interfered with the work; after Nichols realized she had arrived on set high on cocaine, the shoot was temporarily shut down for 24 hours.
- Screenwriter Kevin Wade was inspired to write the screenplay after visiting New York City in 1984 and witnessing throngs of career women walking through the streets in tennis shoes while carrying their high-heels.
- Four different buildings portrayed the offices of Petty Marsh: 1 State Street Plaza, the Midday Club as the company's club room, the reading floor of the L. F. Rothschild Building, and the lobby of 7 World Trade Center, one of the buildings destroyed in the September 11 attacks.
