Whether Dirty Dancing fans want a sequel or not, it is happening. Jennifer Grey announced earlier this year that she had signed on to reprise her role as Frances “Baby” Houseman in the upcoming Dirty Dancing 2. And she has just revealed she won’t be the only one making a comeback.
Grey recently appeared on Extra TV where she discussed the sequel that has been 35-years in the making.
The 62-year-old actress revealed that Dirty Dancing 2 will be taking place, once again, at the fictional Catskills resort of Kellerman’s. This homecoming will likely bring back countless memories for her character, Baby, who fell in love with Johnny Castle during that one fateful summer in the 1980s.
Grey also announced Dirty Dancing 2 will see “Baby, quite a few years older”. She also added that she will not be the only person from the original movie making a return to the series. “You will see other characters that are from the original,” she confirmed before admitting the sequel is “tricky and exciting”.
In another interview, Grey confirmed her character would remain many years older. She said: “Unless there’s a lot of CGI, Baby’s going to be a little older … I’m just so super committed and invested in making it a fresh [take].”
Grey’s return to the franchise is not a complete surprise, but the thought of other characters making a comeback certainly is. We’re thinking some of the only real candidates for return are Jane Brucker (Lisa Houseman), Kelly Bishop (Marjorie Houseman) and Lonny Price (Neil Kellerman).
The actress, who has also starred in Red Dawn, The Cotton Club, and Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, recently spoke about the upcoming sequel missing its shining star: Patrick Swayze. The American actor, who was the leading star of the movie, died on September 14, 2009, after a fierce battle with cancer. Grey touched upon Swayze’s absence in Dirty Dancing 2 earlier this year.
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Grey said: “What happened happened, and that will never happen again. There will never be another Johnny. There will never be another Patrick.” (Via EW)
Swayze’s wife, Lisa Niemi, later wrote about what the star might have thought about the sequel. She confessed that he would have fought strongly for the film to have a great script. She explained: “[The way they] left it was absolutely perfect. There were several iterations of a script for that movie, but Patrick had a high standard and he wasn’t gonna do it just for the money.”
Grey still holds Swayze in high regard, but it wasn’t always like that. In fact, the legendary cinematic couple actually didn’t see eye-to-eye when they first met during the screen tests for Dirty Dancing. She later revealed that she even refused to work with him. She recalled: “Patrick was playing pranks on me and everybody. [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 Dirty Dancing bosses then asked if she would work with Swayze, to which she replied: “Oh no, no, no.”
Swayze gave his opinion about what had transpired behind the scenes at the time, saying: “[Grey] seemed particularly emotional, sometimes bursting into tears if someone criticised her. Other times, she slipped into silly moods, forcing us to do scenes over and over again when she’d start laughing… I didn’t have a whole lot of patience for doing multiple retakes.”
Eventually, Swayze opened up to her about how he really felt. He told the 26-year-old: “I love you. I love you and I’m so sorry. And I know you don’t want me to do the movie.”
Grey remembered the conversation, saying: “He got the tears in his eyes. And I got 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.”
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