Indiana Jones Injuries Made One Working Girl Scene A Little Tricky For Harrison Ford
Mike Nichols' 1988 film "Working Girl" was nominated for six Academy Awards, giving the world a look at what it was like for women in the workplace back then. The film starred Sigourney Weaver, Melanie Griffith, and Harrison Ford, and told the story of a young woman named Tess (Griffith) who has been treated terribly by the men in her life, both bosses and partners. She starts at a new firm with a woman as a boss (Sigourney Weaver) hoping that things will be different. They aren't, and Weaver's Katharine not only takes advantage of Tess's position but steals her ideas and passes them off as her own.
While on a skiing trip, Katharine breaks her leg and asks Tess to house-sit for her. Yeah, because that's what executive assistants do, right? Tess finds out about the stolen idea, pretends to be someone in Katharine's position, and ends up on a date with Katharine's boyfriend, Jack (Ford), who was going to break up with Katharine anyway. Nice guy, huh? Ooh, and he gets Tess drunk and doesn't take advantage of her, which is supposed to let us know that he's not a jerk.
Though the film doesn't stand up to a modern dissection, it was a hit at the time, with a message about treating people equally played by a cast full of stars. You wouldn't think this would be the sort of film that would be physically difficult for Harrison Ford, but it wasn't an easy shoot, according to The Hollywood Reporter's 2018 oral history of the making of "Working Girl."
'I kind of ruined my back'
When Tess gets drunk during the date, Jack takes her "home," at the moment being Katharine's super fancy apartment; it's exactly as 1980s tacky as you would expect. In the THR story, Weaver, Griffith, and Ford discuss the scene where Jack has to carry Tess over his shoulders, up the stairs to the bedroom. Weaver spoke about the decor, saying:
"When we walked into Katharine's apartment to shoot that scene where you see where she lives, it was one of the most crazy-luxurious places. And that ridiculous set of Warhols as you come up the staircase! Mike gave those to me and I still have them. I think they're in storage. I hope they're all right. I always thought it was very funny, the colors they used, you know, like Calamine lotion pink and that sort of sickly green."
Hideous art aside, the real story was about how the actors had to be careful during that staircase scene. Griffith mentions that Ford was already dealing with an injury. She says, "That scene where Harrison carries me up the stairs, that was all about his back. We were really careful about his back — and my butt not being seen, making sure it stayed covered."
That back injury? Ford says, "I kind of ruined my back on one of the 'Indiana Jones' movies, the one I did right before."
Being a hero is rough on the bod
You can almost see the pain on his face in the picture above. Ford very often does his own stunts, and he's injured himself frequently, including fracturing his ankle on the set of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." In this case, though, the injury was from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," a few years before shooting "Working Girl."
According to Newsweek, during the first "Indiana Jones" film, Ford bruised his ribs and tore his ACL doing a stunt. Later, while on 1984's "The Temple of Doom," he had to ride elephants quite a bit, resulting in a herniated disc. He didn't stop working, though, which didn't help his recovery. He was in "incomprehensible pain" but kept working until they finally had to pause production to let him have surgery to repair the disc and recover before finishing the shoot.
Well, you can say this for Harrison Ford; he sure is committed to powering through the pain.