“Dirty Dancing” is broadcast on TF1 this Monday at 9:10 p.m. If their chemistry in the film is obvious, the actors who played Johnny and Baby did not get along at all on the set, and here are the reasons.
Cult film alert on television this Monday evening. TF1 offers its viewers the opportunity to (re)see Dirty Dancing, an extremely popular seventh art romantic comedy. Fans of the genre can rediscover the romance between dance teacher Johnny Castle and “Baby”, a young woman who falls under his spell, all enhanced by multiple choreographies, each more sensual and addictive than the last.
On the screen, Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray form a couple with undeniable, even palpable, chemistry. But behind the scenes, it was a completely different story. Indeed, the two actors who play the main couple of Dirty Dancing completely disagreed on the making of the film.
However, this was not the first time that they worked together, since they both filmed in Red Dawn by John Milius, in 1964. But this was not enough to ease tensions on the set. The reasons ? Patrick Swayze, who died in 2009, found his partner capricious and whiny, in the words of his widow.
Patrick Swayze irritated by Jennifer Gray
The attitude of Jennifer Gray tended to irritate the actor, and he got angry when the actress laughed during the dance scenes. According to the producer of Dirty Dancing, Linda Gottlieb, “he felt like she was weak,” she told the Huffington Post. In his autobiography, the late actor confided, for his part, that he found his partner on screen “particularly emotional”, “bursting into tears if someone criticized her. Other times, she forced us to redo scenes over and over when she started laughing”, which he didn’t have the patience for.
However, rumors of a disagreement were put to rest in 2016, when Jennifer Gray spoke of Patrick Swayze in only glowing terms. According to her, their relationship was like “a marriage between two opposites,” she confided in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. “His fearlessness and my fear of everything together, it was like a marriage where you have two opposites. He could have done anything and I was afraid to do anything.”
Indeed, according to rumors, the two actors had an explanation during filming. Once things were clarified, the preparation of the film would have gone much better behind the scenes. Whatever the case, this tension gave rise, on screen at least, to one of the best couples in cinema!