The tearful apology Patrick Swayze gave Jennifer Grey before ‘Dirty Dancing’
For most people of a certain age, the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing is one of the greatest romantic dramas of all time. Whilst people of later generations might dismiss it as an unbelievably cheesy movie, compounded by its outlandish dance-based story and the hit ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’, there’s no doubting that the partnership between stars Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey was a powerful one.
Yet, things could have been very different, given that Grey wasn’t a fan of Swayze at the time of casting due to his behaviour on the set of an earlier film. Luckily, though, Swayze offered Grey a tearful apology, and the scene was set for one of the era’s defining films. In the movie, Grey plays Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman, vacationing at a Catskills resort with her family. There, she encounters Swayze’s dance instructor, Johnny Castle, who she eventually falls for.
Appearing on The View in May 2022, Grey revealed she didn’t enjoy working with Swayze on the hit 1984 action flick Red Dawn. “Patrick was playing pranks on me and everybody,” she 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.'”
So, when Swayze’s name was mentioned three years later during the casting for Dirty Dancing, Grey was hesitant and said “no, no, no” at the suggestion. She continued: “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.”
Grey eventually agreed to do a screen test with Swayze, and during their chemistry read, he tearfully apologised to her for his actions 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. And I know you don’t want me to do the movie,'” she recalled.
Things then took off. When it came to the dancing, it became readily apparent to Grey that “there was no competition” for the role of Castle. She concluded: “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.”
