Jennifer Grey says Patrick Swayze made tearful apology before Dirty Dancing screen test
‘He pulled me down the hall and said to me, “I love you and I’m so sorry,”’ Grey recalled
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Jennifer Grey has claimed that Patrick Swayze apologised to her in tears to get her to work with him on Dirty Dancing.
The pair starred in the cult classic film as love interests Frances “Baby” Houseman and Johnny Castle.
However, Grey has recently spoken about her lack of chemistry with Swayze, who died in 2009, and said that they were “forced to be together”.
Appearing on The View on Wednesday (4 May), Grey explained that she hadn’t enjoyed working with Swayze on the 1984 film Red Dawn, which came out three years before they would work together on Dirty Dancing.
“Patrick was playing pranks on me and everybody,” Grey said. “[He was] late and the boss of everybody and it was just, like, macho and I just couldn’t take it. I was just like, ‘Please, this guy, that’s enough with him.’”
The experience had made her hesitant to star opposite Swayze in the romantic drama, with Grey describing saying: “No, no, no” when his name was suggested for Dirty Dancing.
“They said, ‘Oh no, but he’s a dancer.’ I know he’s a dancer, I’ve heard the whole story, I’ve heard all about the dancing.”
However, Grey agreed to do a screen test with Swayze, who apologised to her during their chemistry read.
“He pulled me down the hall and said to me, ‘I love you, I love you and I’m so sorry. And I know you don’t want me to do the movie,’” she recalled.
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“He got the tears in his eyes. And I got the tears in my eyes, not for the same reason. I was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s working me.’ And he goes, ‘We could kill it. We could kill it if we did this’ and I was like, ‘OK, honey.’ We go in there and he takes me in his arms and I was like, ‘Oh, boy. I’m done.’ There was no competition.”
Grey has recently released her memoir Out of the Corner, in which she discussed her brief engagement to Johnny Depp, who she said was “crazy jealous and paranoid”. She has also shared her view on the actor’s defamation lawasuit against Amber Heard, which is currently playing out in a high-profile trial.
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