Hollywood, Can We Please Stop Shagging the Secretary?

The profession has evolved. The punchlines haven't.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the couch watching TV with my husband Ben, when it happened again.

A character made a passing comment about somebody running away with their assistant. The line had absolutely nothing to do with the story. It was random, unnecessary, and there it was. Again.

And I thought, Are we seriously still doing this in 2026?

I've been running the Admin Awards for 15 years, and I can tell you of exactly one instance of somebody shagging their boss - who she eventually married by the way.

One.

I've met thousands upon thousands of Administrative Professionals. So either this profession is exceptionally good at keeping secrets, or Hollywood has been feeding us a load of bull for the better part of a century.

I'm going with the latter.

Once you start noticing these references, you can't unhear them. And believe me, I've been noticing them for years.

Apparently, Hollywood has a very limited imagination when it comes to who executives are sleeping with.

A few examples:

In 1985, Cagney & Lacey gave us "He ran off with his secretary."

In 1993, Sleepless in Seattle casually mentioned a man who "ran off with his secretary."

In 2008, Secret Diary of a Call Girl asked, "Why couldn't he just get a girlfriend or shag his secretary?"

Surely, by now, we've moved on.

Not so fast.

It's 2025. Someone in Billionaire's Bunker tells a crying wife:

“This isn’t him hooking up with his secretary, while you’re sipping a mimosa by the pool like he did with Marta.”

That same year, in Now You See Me: Now You Don't: "So, was he banging his secretary?" "No, that's too cliché."

Even the characters know it's a cliché.

And yet, here we are in 2026. 

In Adults, a character consoles a friend by mentioning that her dad "f*cked his secretary, Rhonda."

In The Gentlemen, a character shows off a historic spot: “Apparently, Winston Churchill used to bring his secretary here. For yoga sessions.”

Different decades. Different genres. Same tired joke. Far too many to list here - but you get the point.

And here's what gets me.

None of these references needed to be there.

They weren't essential to the plot. They didn't reveal some profound truth about the human condition. They were throwaway lines, tossed into otherwise unrelated conversations because apparently "ran off with his secretary" is Hollywood's preferred shorthand for a man behaving badly.

God forbid he run off with the regional sales manager.

Or the VP of HR at a Coldplay concert. (Too soon?)

But no. It's always the secretary.

A hundred years of this crap adds up.

We tend to dismiss these things as harmless jokes. And individually, maybe they are. 

But culture is shaped by repetition.

And when an entire profession is repeatedly portrayed as sexually available to the boss, professionally subordinate, or romantically entangled with the person signing their paycheck, those assumptions don't magically disappear when the credits roll.

They become part of how people see the job.

Meanwhile, the actual people? They're leading teams, navigating crises, participating in multimillion-dollar decisions while simultaneously keeping six different personalities from turning one meeting into an international incident.

The Admins I run with are too busy running the place to have an affair with anyone in it.

And somehow, the entertainment industry is still working with the intellectual equivalent of a secretary sitting on her boss's lap.

Administrative Professionals have spent decades evolving their profession while pop culture can't be bothered to update the script.

And maybe that's what bothers me most. We still seem more comfortable imagining a secretary in the boss's bed than an Administrative Professional at the leadership table.

One is a stereotype we've been recycling for generations. The other is a reality happening in organizations every day.

Guess which one gets more screen time?

And to be clear, I'm not suggesting Admins have never had affairs. They're human beings, not an order of celibate monks. They fall in love, make questionable decisions, marry coworkers, divorce coworkers, and occasionally date people they probably shouldn't, like all the rest of us.

But when was the last time you heard someone casually explain that a CEO left his wife for the Director of Supply Chain Optimization?

Exactly.

It's time for better writing. And better thinking.

I'm not asking Hollywood to make Administrative Professionals saints.

I'm asking writers to recognize that the world's understanding of a profession is influenced by how they portray it, even in passing.

Especially in passing.

Because the most powerful stereotypes aren't always the ones someone deliberately teaches us.

They're the ones nobody thinks to question.

And after all these years of celebrating the extraordinary people who do this work, I think it's high time we retired the secretary-as-mistress punchline.

Not because it's offensive. Because it's straight up lazy and unimaginative.

And if Hollywood needs a little help writing a more interesting story about Administrative Professionals, I know a few thousand who could give them some real material.

Food for Thought,
Sunny

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Sunny Nunan is the founder of Admin Awards, widely regarded as the Administrative Profession's highest honor celebrating Administrative Professionals since 2012.