Jennifer Grey is reflecting on how a sex scene with Patrick Swayze in their 1984 film “Red Dawn” was derailed.
According to the actress, 64, Swayze was drunk, and she was “smoking a lot of weed” at the time they filmed the scene that ultimately got cut.
“We were in this, you know, sleeping bag, and he was nervous or whatever, and he came into the sleeping bag drunk,” Grey, said on the Friday episode of the Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast.
Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey in Red Dawn. Alamy Stock Photo
Darren Dalton (from left), Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen, Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell and Jennifer Grey in “Red Dawn” 1984. MGM
Grey, Swayze, Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen and C. Thomas Howell play teenagers who head to the mountains to launch a counter-attack against a Russian-led invasion in their Colorado town in the action film.
“As an actor, you’re looking at all your stuff in the script, and you’re like, okay. I’m running. I’m shooting. I’m running. I’m throwing hand grenades. I’m killing myself with a hand grenade. But this is the only acting scene I get to do where I’m not doing action,” she said of the sex scene.
Grey added it was “one of the more tender scenes which was, I thought, part of the reason I wanted to do the job.”
Darren Dalton, C. Thomas Howell, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey, Patrick Swayze, Brad Savage, Lea Thompson, 1984. MGM
But Swayze — who died in 2009 from pancreatic cancer at 57 — “didn’t know his lines.”
“And then it got cut,” she continued. “And they said, ‘We’ll come back and reshoot it.’ But, of course, they didn’t.” She also shared that her co-stars would “put firecrackers in my door … to prank me.”
“I was smoking a lot of weed in those days, too,” Grey revealed. “And so, I was super paranoid, and I was scared. I didn’t sleep the whole night. So when I went in to shoot my big love scene, my big … romantic scene with him, I was so angry because I was, you know, all self-righteous.”
The “DWTS” alum elaborated further on their scene.
“Keep in mind, I’m a super young actor,” Grey said, “really taking everything seriously, and maybe a little annoying … because I wanna do good.”
Patrick Swayze (left) and Jennifer Grey in “Dirty Dancing,” 1987. Vestron Pictures
Grey previously told the story of how, before she and Swayze starred in 1987’s “Dirty Dancing,” he apologized for the on-set pranks during their screen test.
“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,’” Grey recalled. “And 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.’”
Once Swayze and Grey did their screen test, as she put it, “We go in there and he takes me in his arms and I was like, ‘Oh, boy. I’m done.’”
Swayze passed away 15 years ago this past September, with his longtime assistant, Rosemary Hygate, sharing memories of the fallen star to US Weekly.
“He was smart, funny, articulate [and] insanely talented in so many different disciplines,” she said. “The world lost an amazing human when he passed too young.”
Jennifer Grey visits the SiriusXM Studios on November 1, 2024 in New York City. Getty Images
Former manager Kate Edwards echoed Hygate’s sentiments, recalling, “When you go see a Patrick Swayze film, you know before a single frame is shown that no matter what, he’ll take care of business and he’ll take care of you.”
“It’s that promise and commitment to the viewer that keeps us coming back again and again, and it’s why he’ll remain a movie star forever.”
