Jennifer Grey Says She and Patrick Swayze ‘Never Rehearsed’ Dirty Dancing Lift: ‘No Room for a Panic Attack’

Jennifer Gray reveals some Dirty Dancing secrets!

Speaking to E! News recently, the actress said she and Patrick Swayze “never rehearsed” the now-iconic final scene in which Swayze’s Johnny Castle lifts her character Frances “Baby” Houseman into the air during their final dance number.

“There was no room for a panic attack,” Gray, 63, said of filming the famous moment in the 1987 romance with Swayze, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2009 at age 57.

The actress told E! News that she gave a “hard no” to running through the move ahead of time, as she was “really scared and protective” of her body at the time, but “had no choice” when it came time to actually shoot the scene.

“If you’ve ever tried it, you’d understand what it means to do it,” Gray said. “It was one of those game day things.”

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Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray inside Dirty Dancing (1987). Snap/Shutterstock Jennifer Gray says Patrick Swayze was once ‘in tears’ over how he treated her before ‘Dirty Dancing’

“Patrick is the only one that anyone should really try it with, because he was such a good ballet dancer,” she told E! News. “He was so used to picking up women and so strong. By the end of the movie, I trusted him so much.”

In February 2023, Gray told PEOPLE that she always cries while watching Dirty Dancing now, admitting, “Catch me every time.”

“I feel like I’m reliving it when I’m watching it. And then I realize Patrick’s gone,” she said.

Jennifer Gray and Patrick Swayze at the premiere of the film Dirty Dancing in New York on August 17, 1987.

Collection of Jim Smeal/Ron Galella via Getty Images

Jennifer Gray shared a video of a fellow passenger watching ‘Dirty Dancing’ on a Valentine’s Day flight

As for the lifting scene, which has become one of the film’s most recognizable moments, choreographer Kenny Ortega told PEOPLE back in 2017 that Gray “worked very hard and it showed.”

“Because she was an untrained dancer, the lifts were actually big moments for her personally,” he said. “She strove to perform them as an individual, not just as a character. She brought that to the role, and her reactions were so honest and genuine.”

But would the film work just as well with anyone other than Swayze and Grey? Ortega, now 73, doesn’t think so, he told PEOPLE.

“It would have been a different movie,” he said at the time. “The chemistry would have been different. It wouldn’t have been what it was. I can’t imagine it with anyone but the two of them. It was magical.”

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