Jennifer Grey Opens Up About Chemistry With Patrick Swayze, Going Nude in Red Oaks, and More

Jennifer Grey’s Red Oaks co-star Gage Golightly arrives early at Farmshop at the Brentwood Country Mart in L.A. and wants to know if I’ve ever met the iconic Dirty Dancing actress. As soon as I tell her that I haven’t, she gushes, “Well, just wait. She’s the nicest person in the world with the best energy. You will love her.” Moments later, Grey walks into the bustling neighborhood restaurant and greets us both like we’ve been best friends forever. Then she hands us each a small gift with her favorite candle (“Perfect for the fall months!”) made in Paris. “See, I told you she was the sweetest!” declares Golightly.

Throughout the next two-plus hours, it’s easy to see how beloved Grey is to close friends and acquaintances. Restaurant guests approach her frequently to say hi and see how she’s feeling (she had back surgery a few months ago), while the host and waiters know her by name. Throughout the lunch, she gladly offers to share her pasta with us and insists I take the leftovers home. In an industry where almost everyone is out for themselves (and one rarely thinks about others), Grey is the opposite. Warm, nurturing, and conscientious, she goes out of her way to make you feel at ease. It’s no wonder that Golightly and I hung on to her every word as she dished out advice on everything from body image to love and relationships.

Of course, it soon became clear that one interview piece about Red Oaks wasn’t going to be enough. (Read our first piece with Golightly and Grey here.) Listen in.

Glamour: We were talking about auditions, and Gage, you mentioned that chemistry reads are terrifying. How so?

Gage Golightly: You don’t know what everybody else is going in there with, what their intentions are, how your work stacks up to theirs, all the while having to have faith in what you do.

Jennifer Grey: But with chemistry, it’s either there or it isn’t. What’s to be scared about?

Gage: Yes, but I’m a perfectionist! If I can set everything up to be in my winning favor, I will, and yet I can’t control [chemistry].

Glamour: Jennifer, did you know you had chemistry with Patrick Swayze right away?

Jennifer: I did Red Dawn with him before, but no, I didn’t. I was cast before he was. He came in [to test] along with a bunch of other guys. I didn’t think we had chemistry. But you either do or you don’t. It’s a weird thing, though. It doesn’t have to do with whether you like someone or not. It’s just you either have it or you don’t.

Gage: So true. I just have a super quiet personality, so to lay your soul out there like seven times and try to find something new every time is terrifying. It’s one of the parts of the job I don’t like, but it’s fine.

Glamour: Jennifer, how did you feel about the nudity on Red Oaks? Was that your first time being naked on-screen?

Jennifer: Yes. The truth is, it’s kind of upsetting to be my age and finally be nude in something because there was a lot of years there I was looking pretty good! [Laughs] So it’s a little bit like, “Oh man, why now?!” I was actually very skinny during the show and lost it in my boobs, and this was all because of my back problems and needing to move around a lot because of the pain. But you don’t want to be the too-skinny older lady. You want to be the voluptuous, curvy, yummy [woman]. But I thought to myself, “What is a beautiful body, and what makes people beautiful or sexy?” I could have a tight stomach, but I wouldn’t have my daughter. So if that’s the price to have my daughter, I take it all. And then I realize, it’s not about holding on to something or an image of perfection. There’s a saying, “Your ego is not your amigo.” I didn’t come up with it, but it’s true. The ego can’t be satisfied. You look at pictures of yourself when you were younger and when you thought you weren’t pretty or were fat and realize, “I was so beautiful, how could I not have noticed?” Then you realize, “I’m going to look back on today, and think the same thing.” The fact that we can’t know in the moment that we’re enough and as we’re supposed to be…you have to love the body you’re in.

__Glamour: Jennifer, you’ve been married to Clark Gregg from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for 14 years. What advice would you give our readers about love and relationships? __

Jennifer: We’ve been married almost 15 years, and together for 16 years. We met through friends. But someone turned me on to this book a few years before I met him, and it sounded so corny and stupid that I was actually offended by the title alone. It’s called Getting to I Do. A book that implied that you needed to read a book to learn how to get married just seemed [crazy] to me. But it changed my…it was so eye-opening because it was counter-intuitive. Also, last summer I started reading this book on tape called Your Brain on Love, and it explains the cutting-edge of neurobiology of healthy relationships.

Btdubs @clarkgregg, aka my #superherohubby, my insta account is @jennifer_grey #datenight

A photo posted by Jennifer Grey (@jennifer_grey) on Oct 17, 2015 at 4:48pm PDT

Glamour: What’s something we would be surprised to know about you?

Jennifer: I want to start a dance studio, where we will do ballroom—and tango and hip hop and ballet—and have incredible teachers for adults and for kids and do partner dancing. People can come who aren’t dancers, but can have a great class. I want this to be the way you exercise. This idea came after I did Dancing With the Stars. I realized I never wanted to go to the gym again! Why would I do that when I look forward to a gifted teacher and the way you can be with other people? You can literally draft off of each other’s energies and feel different.

Red Oaks is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.