Moira Kelly and 'The Cutting Edge'

Revisiting a Millennial rom-com icon. Plus: A 'Ted Lasso' favorite returns, and a must-have book for '90s mall girls. Toe pick!

Moira Kelly and D.B. Sweeney in The Cutting Edge (1992).

People were always comparing Moira Kelly to Winona Ryder — specifically, a younger version of the Edward Scissorhands ingénue.

That made Kelly laugh back in 1993. At 24, she was three years older than Ryder, whose dark, winsome glamour had put her at the top of Hollywood’s shortlist for movies that were offbeat (Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Heathers) and prestigious (The Age of Innocence). Despite their similar coloring, Kelly and Ryder had absolutely nothing in common. While Ryder, pre-Jo March, often projected a fragile femininity, Kelly veered closer to a young Debra Winger, oozing humor, intensity, and a touch of madness. She was like watching fireworks; in hindsight, it’s hard to believe that no sparks flew off the big screen so as to send moviegoers sprinting for the emergency exits. I first saw her in The Cutting Edge, the greatest Olympics romantic comedy of our time. The movie premiered 31 years ago this month and quickly became an obsession among middle-school girls, myself included, who yelled “Toe pick!” in locker-lined hallways, sometimes at boys who had no idea what that word meant. For the uninitiated: A “toe pick” is the jagged ridge at the front of an ice skate that helps figure skaters nail their landings. It is also a sick burn that bratty, rich-girl professional pairs skater Kate Moseley (Kelly) uses to roast her new partner Doug Dorsey (D.B. Sweeney) whenever he falls on the ice.

The Cutting Edge was a sporty spin on The Taming of the Shrew, with Sweeney playing a washed-up hockey player sidelined by injury, his Gretzky dreams dashed in a minute. Doug was celebrated for his fancy footwork, but damage to his peripheral vision has apparently made him useless to the NFL. As he works construction to make ends meet, a pragmatic Russian coach (Roy Dotrice) shows up, offering a strange invitation: Would Doug audition to be Kate’s skating companion? It is a very good job, a job that could take him all the way to the Winter Olympics, but it is not for the faint of heart. Kate, you see, has cycled through eight different partners in three years, making Doug her very last resort. She is the embodiment of the Ice Queen — imperious, snobby, and dismissive, someone with whom you would never want to work. (Kate has “got a nickname that rhymes with rich,” declared the movie’s official trailer.) Her mother died when she was young, and her controlling father (Terry O’Quinn), determined to get that gold medal, raised his daughter in sheltered isolation and built her a world-class ice rink next to their Gothic countryside mansion. Kate wears attitude like armor. It shields her from the indignities tolerated in her pro career, including the former coach who ordered, “I want to see your ass in the air!” (She flipped up her skirt and skated away in protest. A perfect response.) Off the ice, she dates a stuffy Harvard MBA named Hale (Dwier Brown, a.k.a. Kevin Costner’s ghost dad in Field of Dreams). With his high-class pedigree and Dead Poets vibe, Hale — I want to call him Kale — is exactly the kind of Waspy financier-capitalist Kate should be with. He seems to accept her exactly as she is (fantastic) but alas: He won’t get the girl because romantic comedies must follow certain beats to work. Doug Dorsey is the hero, the Tom Hanks, which makes Hale/Kale the Bill Pullman of The Cutting Edge, the predestined dumpee. (Justice for Walter!)

Enter Mr. Wrong-Side-of-the-Tracks. When Doug steps on to Kate’s turf, and they lock eyes, the chemistry is flames on flames on flames. From then on, every “toe pick!” is a come-on, each snide, playful comment a covert declaration of mutual affection. Doug drops Kate on her skirted rear end — a juvenile caveman move — yet his crass behavior and exceptional athletic ability activates her Aries will to win. He makes her better and vice versa. Doug hits defrost, and after 90 minutes, Kate has thawed to reveal the best parts of herself — all the spunk without the spite. During the movie’s All Is Lost Moment at the Olympic games in France, she gives up on the dream of winning gold or silver or even bronze, backing out of the neat but dangerous trick she and Doug practiced together. It is called the Pamchenko twist, and it is virtually impossible to attempt in real life. But not in the movies. Finally, just as the two are about to compete, Doug bares his soul and Kate melts into a puddle of goo. In further plot spoilers (sorry), they throw caution to the wind and go for it — the decision is hers, not his. The shrew will be tamed on her terms. Medals, schmedals. True love: That’s the actual prize. (But also: Medals. These are athletes we’re talking about!)

I rewatched The Cutting Edge the other night and it holds up. Since it was filmed in 1991, and 1991 was basically an extension of the Eighties, it has a wonderfully cheesy soundtrack and dated sportswear that looks like the stuff my father and his friends Stan and Steve wore in that era. (Hi, Dad! Wish you still had that turquoise Reebok windbreaker!) Many of the skating scenes are amusingly blurry, edited to disguise Sweeney and Kelly’s stunt doubles, but no one’s expecting actors to transform into Olympians following mere weeks of rehearsal — only Meryl Streep can do that. The big performance happens in stolen glances and sharp banter as the mismatched pair gradually commit to one another.

The movie barely made a dent at the box office, collecting only $25 million, but for girls, it rivaled blockbuster Batman Returns’ special effects and star power. It became an instant cult classic, a VHS collectible, a slumber-party bonding ritual. The studio, MGM, and the men who worked on The Cutting Edge — notably director Paul Michael Glaser and scribe Tony Gilroy (who went on to write Michael Clayton and the Jason Bourne trilogy) — wanted to capitalize on the popularity of figure skating during the year that Kristi Yamaguchi scored gold and Nancy Kerrigan bronze. (Tonya Harding, a fierce competitor like Kate, placed fourth in the 1992 Albertville finals.) I’ll bet the male creators underestimated the movie’s appeal to seventh graders while designing PG-rated scenarios meant for adults — there are closed-door sexcapades. There are tequila shots. Kate says “orgasmic” during a press conference. (As I recall that unexpected word choice was a hit with my classmates.) Moira Kelly struck such a chord because of how marvelous she was at acting … twelve. Yes, her character is technically college-age, but hear me out: Kate still lives under tight parental supervision, with Mr. Moseley setting the rules and pulling the strings. She has so many feelings and so much angst, and she is very, very funny when she expresses her emotions freely. She is learning to toe that tricky line between duty (the cultural obligation to behave like a lady) and freedom (the impulse to let her freak flag fly). She is figuring out how to still be herself in a boy’s world, and how to act around boys she likes. At the same time, she demonstrates a lot of moxie on the rink — she is both an athlete and artist, and she is not afraid of showing her talent. That determination made her the Yamaguchi of Nineties rom-coms. With a withering eye roll and an impish laugh, Kelly brought Kate’s youthful messiness to vivid life. Can you imagine anyone else in this role? (Maybe circa-1985 Megan Follows?)

In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Sweeney, an affable Everyman who has worked steadily since The Cutting Edge, credited Kelly’s screen presence and Gilroy’s screenplay for giving the rom-com its staying power. He had shown it to his young daughter and was pleasantly surprised. “It didn’t feel like some kind of weird old movie or something; it feels very contemporary,” he said at the time. “I think the movie gets better and better, in comparison to the movies that come out each year. Romantic comedies are particularly hard to make.”

He and Kelly jointly turned down an offer to do a sequel.

“Because the script was terrible and they offered us no money,” he explained. “It was really simple. If the script had been decent, and they had offered us any money — she and I made a deal that we wouldn’t do it without the other one. It was easy to stick to, because the money was so insultingly low, and the script was so bad. I just thought it was unfortunate that they’d do that. But I heard they’re talking about remaking Casablanca in Hollywood right now, so — not that Cutting Edge is anything like Casablanca. But there are some movies that if they work, you should just leave them alone.”

Kelly and Brendan Fraser in With Honors (1994). Cue Madonna’s “I’ll Remember.”

So, what happened to Kelly? Why did she never become a big movie star like Winona Ryder and Debra Winger? After breaking through with The Cutting Edge, she starred opposite Robert Downey Jr. in Chaplin (1993), juggling the dual roles of Charlie Chaplin paramours Hetty Kelly and Oona O’Neill. In 1994, she played the coolest coed this side of Ali MacGraw in the ensemble weepie With Honors and voiced Nala in The Lion King. Then she disappeared from the zeitgeist, picking up supporting parts in smaller films and headlining one about the Catholic activist Dorothy Day (Entertaining Angels) and two directed by women (the rom-com Changing Habits, the drama Drive, She Said). Aaron Sorkin cast her as White House media strategist Mandy Hampton in The West Wing, though the showrunner wrote her off the beloved series before its second season because he felt she wasn’t a good fit. (West Wing’s Mandy-hating fans agreed.) She later held on to her SAG card with a good, regular gig as Chad Michael Murray’s mom in One Tree Hill, among other TV roles. In the meantime, she married a civilian from Texas and had two kids. The daughter of Irish immigrants (her father was a violinist and her mother a nurse), Kelly grew up on Long Island, totally devoted to Catholicism. She would consult with her priest if she thought a script was too gritty or graphic. In her mid-twenties, she declared to The New York Times: "The role of the mother is the role of a lifetime. Just give me my paycheck, help me find a husband and let me raise a family." (OK. Wow. Lots to process there!)

I think Hollywood didn’t know quite what to do with Moira Kelly. I also suspect that she said no to a lot of interesting opportunities that could have kept her in the spotlight. While her star has certainly dimmed, she’ll live forever in the hearts of Elder Millennials like me who know her best as Kate Moseley.

(The Cutting Edge is available to stream on Prime Video).

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Currently, I’m still watching: Ted Lasso, season three. The latest episode, “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea,” written by Sasha Garron, kicked the plot forward with perfect aim. It introduced a hilariously self-absorbed free agent named Zava (Maximilian Osinski), whom Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) is desperate to sign in her relentless battle against evil ex-husband Rupert (Anthony Head), who owns rival West Ham United. More important, it brought back my favorite side character, Trent Crimm (James Lance), the journalist who formerly covered AFC Richmond for The Independent. The last time we saw Trent, he had resigned from the paper after reporting on Ted’s public panic attack — over time, the men became friends and Trent could no longer cover the coach objectively. Trent was always cool. Once he realized that Ted was not a fool but rather a solid leader, he went all Anton Ego at the end of Ratatouille. (I still have goosebumps from his endorsement of the “Lasso Way” in season one, episode three.) I assumed Trent left London to star in a BBC detective show about a retired reporter investigating small-town murders. Please understand: This should still happen. Otherwise, he’s back, baby, and his hair looks better than ever. He is also writing a book. His subject: Richmond. Who would want to write a book on a fictional sports team?! :)

Ted gave Trent his blessing, though Roy Kent (the deliciously grizzled Brett Goldstein) is slow to trust the interloper. While Ted urges Roy to let his guard down around Trent, he also seizes the opportunity to explain Hallmark Christmas movies at Roy’s request. They are “films that feature women from the big city falling in love with their childhood crushes,” he says in one of the episode’s funniest observations. “It’s usually some fella that owns a Christmas tree farm. Sometimes he’s also Santa Claus or a prince. They suck, but they’re great. But they also mostly suck. But they’re also kinda great. They’re good with the sound off.”

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I’m reading: The Kingdom of Prep: The Inside Story of the Rise and (Near) Fall of J.Crew, a new book from fashion journalist Maggie Bullock. If you geek out over sartorial history and the name “Jenna Lyons,” then this one’s for you, my friend. Also! In related listening, I recently devoured the podcast Articles of Interest. Its “American Ivy” series explores the origins and evolution of preppy style, from Princeton’s old-money crewneck campus to hip Mid-century urban jazz clubs to the current-day pharmaceutical sales rep sporting a Ralph Lauren polo at a corporate all-hands. The first episode might just hook you — even if popped collars make you go “ew.”

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If you’ve read this far, thank you! I appreciate you. And when/if you get a chance to watch The Cutting Edge, do let me know what you think! Also, if the name “Jimmy Durante” rings a bell, be sure to check out my Screen Sounds interview on the music of Nora Ephron. This week, I also recap the Oscars red carpet with the wonderful Books are Chic podcaster Courtney Marzilli, my kindred spirit in fangirling over Jeremy Allen White. (You can listen here.) Yours in “That caviar is a garnish,” EC.