Patrick Swayze had anything but the time of his life when his Dirty Dancing costar Jennifer Grey couldn’t stop giggling while filming a key scene, according to the movie’s choreographer.
Kenny Ortega looked back on the ordeal in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, recalling the montage sequence of Swayze’s Johnny teaching Grey’s Baby how to dance. Her family is vacationing at a resort in the Catskills, where Johnny is a professional dancer, and she ends up stepping in for his regular partner at one of his must-do assignments. He’s already not in love with the arrangement, but Baby truly annoys him during their practice when she can’t get through the part of the routine where his hand brushes her underarm.
“This moment where he’s tickling her, she’s literally losing herself,” Ortega said. “We’re in a tin building. It’s freezing cold. It’s 4 o’clock in the morning. Patrick is so tired and wanting to go home. And every time he does this, she’s giggling, and the look on his face. No one directed that.”
Fortunately for all involved, Dirty Dancing proved to be a hit, launching Swayze and Grey to new levels of stardom and setting Ortega up for a long career as a choreographer, director, and producer. (His other credits include Newsies, Hocus Pocus, and High School Musical.) Nearly 40 years later, Grey is also set to star in a yet-untitled Dirty Dancing legacy sequel, which she wants to “honor” Swayze, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2009.
Back in 2020, Grey herself reflected on the infamous tickling scene and named it as one of her favorites.
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“I really like the way that Emile [Ardolino], the director, captured some of the dynamics between Patrick and me,” she told Woman’s Day. “When you see him tickling me, and you see how frustrated he was when he looks at me because I cannot stop laughing because I’m ticklish — and then as soon as someone tells you not to laugh it makes you almost anxious and you can’t stop laughing — there’s something about that realness of that moment being caught.”
Beyond the tickle scene, it’s well known that Grey and Swayze weren’t crazy about working together again, having previously costarred in the 1984 action flick Red Dawn.
“I was cast first, and I thought the part of Johnny Castle was going to be some swarthy, young Latin New Yorker, dangerous type. Not this guy that I just did Red Dawn with from Texas, who’s, you know, really bossy and played pranks,” Grey told PEOPLE in 2022. “I was scared, because it was my first lead, and I wanted to make sure it would really work. And I knew that I had no chemistry with him, and I knew that I didn’t really feel like he was my cup of tea.”
Thankfully for both of them, moviegoers disagreed.
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