How Melanie Griffith Prepared To Play a Real ‘Working Girl’
When Melanie Griffith was cast as ‘Tess McGill’ in Working Girl, she moved to New York and rented a town house on a quiet side street in the far West Village. For three months, Griffith researched her character. “I do a lot of work on my characters, then I pretend I’m that person, throw all of that work away, and just be what I put into it,” Griffith said. “Then, no matter what happens, it works like a computer. You’ve already put the information in, so you just have to push a button and it comes up.”
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| Melanie Griffith as 'Tess McGill' battling a serious case of imposter syndrome in Working Girl |
“For me, preparing for a role is a very private thing,” Griffith added. “I don’t discuss it with anyone. I seek out people I can get information from… but I don’t talk to anyone about how I’m going to do a role. I hung out with secretaries, and just talked to them about their lives and their ambitions, what they want.”
To help Griffith research her role, screenwriter Kevin Wade took her to Wall Street “to get the lay of the land.” They ended up at Bear, Stearns & Co., where Griffith met a couple of female merger and acquisitions executives and some secretaries. Griffith concentrated on three secretaries who worked for then-Bear Stearns vice president Liam Dalton, who was the technical advisor for Working Girl, as well as the model Charlie Sheen had used for his character in Wall Street.
Liam Dalton recalled, “Melanie sat with my girls and just got to understand their mindset – what they talked about during the day, their wardrobe, their makeup, everything. She’d have a cigarette with them, go to the ladies’ room with them, walk from the ferry to the office with them and watch them file or type. She was always concerned with trying to portray the character as best she could, constantly trying to understand what would motivate Tess, so she wouldn’t come off as unrealistic. She worked hard at the nuances.”
Griffith explained, “I just talked to them about their lives. Were they happy? Were they content? They didn’t consider me a movie star. I don’t think they knew who I was. I didn’t meet anybody like Tess. Most of the secretaries were very happy with where they worked, or they had already gotten the higher job. So the rest, I just made up.”
Although Griffith “didn’t do the Method thing and get a job” on Wall Street, she admitted to having one more inside source of information and inspiration. “The guy who wrote the script introduced me to this 27-year-old whiz kid from Bear, Stearns – he’s the youngest vice president they ever had,” Griffith said. “We started dating.”
Griffith’s new love interest was Working Girl’s technical advisor, Liam Dalton, whom she dated for about a year. “She knew zero about business, but in a short time you could have put her in front of a monitor and she would have made money,” Dalton said. He recalled finding her curled up in front of the TV watching the CNN financial news when he arrived home from a long day at the office. “She picked it up really fast. I’d come home and she’d tell me what happened in the market that day.”
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| Melanie Griffith in 1987, before her transformation into 'Tess McGill' |
Griffith said she enjoyed her one-on-one high finance tutorials. “It’s really interesting. But I don’t think that I’m intelligent enough to be really involved. Lee was wonderful help, not necessarily in ‘do this or do that,’ but it was nice to be around his energy. And then it was over.” For his part, Liam Dalton took the breakup with good humor. “I do like the role of being the jilted lover,” he joked.
After some exposure to the world of finance, Griffith collaborated with screenwriter Kevin Wade and director Mike Nichols to make Tess more sympathetic. She was concerned that the audience might find her drive to climb the corporate ladder self-serving and her methods unethical. For example, in the original script, Tess unwittingly participates in insider trading. Griffith’s suggestions and contributions were valued by Kevin Wade. “I wrote Working Girl about an underdog, not about a woman,” Wade said. “Her lines are boys’ talk. Melanie chose to play against it with that breathy Judy Holliday voice. And that’s not her, that’s smart acting.”
Nikki Finke, “A Working Girl Makes Good,” Los Angeles Times, 12/17/88
Alison Leigh Cowan, “How Three Plum Movie Roles Took Shape,” New York Times, 12/18/88
Bob Strauss, “Working Partners: Melanie Griffith & Harrison Ford,” Chicago Sun-Times, 12/18/88
Jay Carr, “Melanie Griffith Poised for Stardom,” Boston Globe, 12/22/88
Guy Trebay, “Working Girl,” Premiere, 12/88
Jesse Kornbluth, “Melanie’s Place in the Sun,” Vanity Fair, 4/89
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