First Wives’ Club: How A Talented Trio Beat The Odds

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Woman’s Weekly
First Wives’ Club: How A Talented Trio Beat The Odds
By Staff
June 27, 2026

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Thirty years ago, a star-stud­ded cast teamed up to head­line The First Wives Club. The movie, about three divorcées exact­ing revenge on their cheat­ing ex-hus­bands, was a box-office smash – much to the sur­prise of the stu­dio that made it! We’ve dug up some curi­ous facts about the film…

Lus­cious lips

Elise gets a trout pout for a scene in the movie. Instead of the cus­tom­ary cos­met­ic­grade fillers, the star’s lips were injec­ted with a saline solu­tion to pucker them up tem­por­ar­ily. Gol­die, 80, said later that the exper­i­ence was so pain­ful, she’d never have the pro­ced­ure done for real. The lip scenes were, however, com­edy gold. At the cos­metic sur­geon’s office, she demands, “I want Tina Turner. I want Jag­ger… Fill ’em up!”

Power play­ers

The cast is loaded with Hol­ly­wood over­achiev­ers. Diane Keaton, Gol­die Hawn, Dame Mag­gie Smith and Eileen Heck­art had already won Oscars, and Mar­cia Gay Harden and J.K. Sim­mons later also took home a prized golden statuette each. Bette Midler and Stock­ard Chan­ning, mean­while, were both Oscar nom­in­ees.

Birth­day bash

Gol­die, Diane and Bette became close pals dur­ing film­ing. The tight three­some were all born within 45 days of each other and cel­eb­rated their 50th birth­days on set. Gol­die described the time as a “roller­coaster of love” that star­ted every day with cof­fee in the makeup trailer. “We agreed to grow old together… We never got to live together, but we did grow older together.” Bette, 80, recalled, “I was on the floor every single day cry­ing with laughter.”

An expec­ted flop

Dir­ector Hugh Wilson, who died in 2018, aged 74, firmly believed the film was going to be a massive flop because it was such a hodge­podge of dif­fer­ent people’s work. Based on a ser­i­ous book, it was later turned into a com­edy for the screen. After sev­eral rewrites, the final scriptwriter deman­ded his name not be in the cred­its. Hugh said it was also so long that “after we shot it and put it all together, it was longer than Gandhi”.

He explained, “I saw the first screen­ing with a friend. He pat­ted me on the back and said, ‘Good luck with that. I’ll see you later.’” It was finally edited down to a reas­on­able length by leav­ing comedian Jon Stew­art’s per­form­ance as Gol­die’s younger lover on the cut­ting-room floor.

New York, New York

Joan Rivers was less than thrilled to find the movie was shoot­ing not far from her Big Apple abode. “I was sit­ting in the back of a truck when Joan came up,” recalled Hugh. “She said, ‘You ba****ds, I live in this neigh­bour­hood! Get out!’

We all laughed, and she said, ‘Well, who are you?’ And I said, ‘I’m the dir­ector!’

She asked why, if I was the dir­ector, was I sit­ting there in the back of the truck talk­ing to team­sters? And I said, ‘Well, it’s because

I’m safe here. I’m a little afraid of Bette Midler.’”

Happy end­ing

The movie ends with Gol­die, Diane and Bette tri­umphantly singing and dan­cing to You Don’t Own Me – but it wasn’t in the script. “We never had an end­ing,” said Hugh. “If we had never come up with that song, we’d prob­ably still be sit­ting in the Lower East Side try­ing to fig­ure it out!”

Just a fluke

When the film was released in 1996, it opened at num­ber one and held the top spot for three con­sec­ut­ive weeks, push­ing out oth­ers head­lined by Bruce Wil­lis, Steven Seagal and Hugh Grant. The stu­dio believed its suc­cess was a stroke of good luck, rather than a sign femal­e­driven movies could be highly prof­it­able. Des­pite all three lead act­resses want­ing a sequel, this never even­tu­ated.

Cameos

In addi­tion to its stel­lar cast, The First Wives Club fea­tures some inspired cameo appear­ances, includ­ing iconic fem­in­ist Gloria Steinem, who appears in the final party scene, and Heather Lock­lear as the new, younger wife of the hus­band of Gol­die Hawn’s char­ac­ter. Olivia Gold­smith, who wrote the novel the movie is based on, also makes a brief appear­ance as a funeral attendee. But the most mem­or­able cameo in the film goes to Ivana Trump for her line, “Ladies, you have to be strong and inde­pend­ent. And remem­ber: Don’t get mad, get everything!”