Working Girl

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.[4]

Melanie Griffith read the screenplay for Working Girl over a year before the production began, and expressed interest in playing the role of Tess McGill.[4] Approximately a year later, Mike Nichols agreed to direct the film after reading the screenplay while shooting his film Biloxi Blues in Alaska.[4] Following Nichols' attachment, Griffith had a formal audition for the role.[4] 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.[4]

Following the casting of Sigourney Weaver and Harrison Ford—both major stars at that point—the studio agreed to cast Griffith, as they felt Weaver and Ford's involvement gave them a higher chance of box-office success.[4]

Principal photography of Working Girl began on February 16, 1988, in New York City.[4] Many scenes were shot in the New Brighton section of Staten Island in New York City. One half-day of shooting to complete the skiing accident scene took place in New Jersey.[4] Four different buildings portrayed the offices of Petty Marsh—1 State Street Plaza; the Midday Club, which served as the company's club room; the lobby of 7 World Trade Center (one of the buildings destroyed in the September 11 attacks); and the reading floor of the L. F. Rothschild Building.[4] One Chase Manhattan Plaza was featured at the end of the film as the Trask Industries building.[4] Filming completed on April 27, 1988, with the final sequence being shot on the Staten Island Ferry.[4]

Throughout the shoot, Griffith was in the midst of struggling with a years-long alcohol and cocaine addiction, which at times interfered with the shoot.[5] "There were a lot of things that happened on Working Girl that I did that were not right," Griffith recalled in 2019. "It was the late '80s. There was a lot going on party-wise in New York. There was a lot of cocaine. There was a lot of temptation."[6] After Nichols realized that Griffith had arrived on set high on cocaine, the shoot was temporarily shut down for 24 hours.[7] Griffith elaborated on the experience:

Mike got so mad at me, he wouldn't talk to me. Mike Haley, the first [assistant director], just came up and said, "We're shutting down. Go home", and I knew I was in so much trouble. … The next morning he (Nichols) took me to breakfast and said, "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to pay for last night out of your pocket. We're not going to report you to the studio, but you have to pay for what it cost", and it was $80,000. They wanted to get my attention and they really did. It was a very humbling, embarrassing experience, but I learned a lot from it.[7]

Three weeks after filming was completed, Griffith entered a rehabilitation facility to receive treatment for her addiction.[8] Ironically, 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.[9]

The film's main theme "Let the River Run" was written, arranged, and performed by American singer-songwriter Carly Simon, and won her an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Grammy Award for Best Original Song,[10] making Simon the first artist to win this trio of awards for a song written, as well as performed, entirely by a single artist.[11] As a single, "Let the River Run" reached No. 49 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and No. 11 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart in early 1989.[12]

The film's additional soundtrack was scored by Simon and Rob Mounsey. The soundtrack album was released by Arista Records on August 29, 1989, and peaked at No. 45 on the Billboard 200.[13]

The film was released in the United States on December 21, 1988,[4] in 1,051 theaters and grossed $4.7 million on its opening weekend.[3] It went on to make $63.8 million in North America and $39.2 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $103 million.[3]

The film received generally positive reviews from critics. It has an 83% "Fresh" rating as of 2022 on Rotten Tomatoes[14] based on 47 reviews, and an average score of 6.90/10. The site's consensus is; "A buoyant corporate Cinderella story, Working Girl has the right cast, right story, and right director to make it all come together." The film also has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 at Metacritic based on reviews from 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[15] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.[16]

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, "The plot of Working Girl is put together like clockwork. It carries you along while you're watching it, but reconstruct it later and you'll see the craftsmanship".[17] In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley described Melanie Griffith as "luminous as Marilyn Monroe, as adorable as one of Disney's singing mice. She clearly has the stuff of a megastar, and the movie glows from her".[18] Janet Maslin, in her review for The New York Times, wrote, "Mike Nichols, who directed Working Girl, also displays an uncharacteristically blunt touch, and in its later stages the story remains lively but seldom has the perceptiveness or acuity of Mr. Nichols's best work".[19] In his review for Time, Richard Corliss wrote, "Kevin Wade shows this in his smart screenplay, which is full of the atmospheric pressures that allow stars to collide. Director Mike Nichols knows this in his bones. He encourages Weaver to play (brilliantly) an airy shrew. He gives Ford a boyish buoyancy and Griffith the chance to be a grownup mesmerizer".[20]

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

• 2002: AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – No. 91[31]
• 2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains:
  • Tess McGill – Nominated Hero[32]
  • Katherine Parker – Nominated Villain[32]
• 2004: AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
  • "Let the River Run" – No. 91[33]
• 2005: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
  • Tess McGill: "I have a head for business and a bod for sin." – Nominated[34]
• 2006: AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers – No. 87[35]
• 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10:
  • Nominated Romantic Comedy Film[36]

Working Girl was released on VHS and Laserdisc in 1989 by CBS/Fox Video; "Family Portrait", one of the shorts from The Tracey Ullman Show featuring The Simpsons, was included before the movie on the VHS release. The film was released on DVD on April 17, 2001, by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.[37] Special features included two theatrical trailers and three TV spots. The film was released on Blu-ray on January 6, 2015.[37][38] The special features from the DVD release were carried over for the Blu-ray release.[39]

Working Girl was also made into a short-lived NBC television series in 1990, starring Sandra Bullock as Tess McGill.[40] It lasted 12 episodes.

A Broadway musical version is in the works as of 2017, with a score to be written by Cyndi Lauper from Fox Stage Productions and Aged in Wood Productions. For Aged in Wood, the producers were Robyn Goodman and Josh Fiedler. Instead of a production company on Working Girl, the musical adaptation was switched to a license production by Aged in Wood Productions since Disney took over ownership of Fox Stage in 2019.[41]

A reboot of Working Girl has reported to be in development at Hulu, with Ilana Peña adapting the script. Selena Gomez is in talks to produce.[42]