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In an interview tied to her memoir “Out of the Corner,” “Dancing With the Stars” season 11 champ Jennifer Grey revealed that Patrick Swayze apologized to her for his behavior on the set of “Red Dawn,” the film they made together before their huge breakout hit, “Dirty Dancing.”
Grey Said Swayze Had ‘Tears in His Eyes’ When He Apologized
During an appearance on “The View” promoting her book, Grey recalled how she had just spent three months with Swayze “in New Mexico in the snow with AK-47s fighting the Russians,” which is what “Red Dawn” is about — a group of teenagers fighting Russian invaders.
She said that on set, “Patrick was playing pranks on me and late and the boss of everybody and it was just like, macho.” So when the casting director of “Dirty Dancing” brought up his name to play Johnny Castle, she said, “Oh no. No, no, no.”
They finally convinced her to give him a chance when they mentioned how good he was at “partnering” because of his ballet background. As Grey writes in the book:
Emile [Ardolino], the director, pitched in. “Male ballet dancers are trained specifically to partner. Pas de deux is all partner work.”
He had a point. Having zero experience doing ballroom or Latin dancing, I was in an especially vulnerable position, and utterly dependent on the skills of my costar. The guy, whoever it ended up being, needed to know how to lead.
So when he showed up for the screentest, she told “The View” hosts that he pulled her aside and apologized to her for his behavior on the set of “Red Dawn.”
“He pulled me down the hall and said to me, ‘I love you, I love you and I’m so sorry. I know you don’t want to me to do this,’” recounted Grey. “And he got the tears in his eyes and I got the tears in my eyes, not for the same reason — I was like, ‘This guy is working me.’ and he goes, ‘We could kill it. We could kill it if we did this.’ and I’m like, ‘OK, honey.’”
But then, she said they got into the room and he took her in his arms and that was it.
“I was like, ‘Oh boy. I’m done.’ There was no competition. He was like the easy chair I’d been dreaming of my whole life.”
In her book, she expands on that moment, writing, “Patrick was far and away the best dancer who’d come in. He was strong, manly, and confident. … There was no question that our bodies liked each other, in spite of what my head was saying. There has never been anyone with Patrick’s combination of grace, brawn, sensitivity, and fearless, reckless gusto.”
She also told People in an interview tied to her book that she wishes she could apologize to Swayze. They had a famously contentious on-set relationship and she wishes she could say, “I’m so sorry that I couldn’t just appreciate and luxuriate in who you were, instead of me wishing you were more like what I wanted you to be.”
Grey also confirmed to People that she’s involved in the “Dirty Dancing” sequel, reveaing that she’s “working on the script” with Lionsgate.
“We’ve been working on it for a couple of years. And I know in my heart, I would love to give fans or a young, new audience an experience that would never replicate that, but has the same kind of underpinnings,” said Grey, though she has assured fans that there is no replacing Swayze.
“All I can say is there is no replacing anyone who’s passed — you never try to repeat anything that’s magic like that,” Grey told People in November 2020.
Grey Also Told ‘The View’ That Her Book Helped Her Take Herself Out of the Corner
The title of the memoir is obviously a nod to the famous “Dirty Dancing” line where Johnny grabs Baby from her family’s table at the end-of-summer dinner and they perform the summer’s last dance together, telling her father, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”
Grey told the ladies of “The View” that she found it weird to be known for that line but to feel like she’d been put “in a corner in a couple of ways.”
“I noticed that there have been many chapters in my life that have shaped me into who I am — usually the hard things really forged the heat of real pain, the heat of real hopelessness, loneliness, no one rescuing me, no one coming to get me, nobody understanding and I went, ‘You know what? I’m not gonna collude with them,’” said Grey.
She continued, “I thought how weird that I would be known for ‘nobody puts Baby in a corner,’ and yet I felt in a corner in a couple of ways and I kept thinking that’s not right.”
As she started unpacking her life as he wrote the book, she realized that it was actually herself who put her in a corner.
“[Writing the book] I just traced back and I saw this confluence of events and ways in which I had felt put in a corner and once I really drilled down, without the story — without whatever story I’d been telling myself for so many years that I’d just assumed it was fossilized — I went, ‘Wait a minute, what if that’s not true? What if those were choices I made and I put myself in the corner?’” she said, concluding with, “The good news is, if I put myself in the corner, I can take myself out.”
“Out of the Corner” is available now. In the book, Grey touches on her botched plastic surgery, living a double life as a teenager, comparing the backlash of her nose job to an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” and reveals how agreeing to do “Dancing With the Stars” saved her life.
“Dancing With the Stars” returns for season 31 in the fall of 2022 on Disney Plus.
‘Dancing With the Stars’ Cast Member Confirms Season 31 Return
