The phrase
"girlfriend role" refers to the behavior or characteristics that someone expects from a person who is their romantic partner or girlfriend.
Full definition
Woodley (The Fault in Our Stars) does her best infusing a warm personality into what is too often the underappreciated yet overly
agreeable girlfriend role.
She's also perfected the
hapless girlfriend role and although she doesn't have as much to do in Ted as we've seen in the past, Kunis still makes her presence known.
Like most biopics, some storylines aren't fully developed (Woodley is saddled with the
standard girlfriend role and given very little to do), but it's mostly efficient and focused.
Here, she gets to play basically
the girlfriend role but at the same time, a conflicted character.
So as soon as I got Margo, he was in and then Anna [Kendrick] is one of those people that this role, if played by anybody else would just feel like
the girlfriend role.