Jennifer Grey thought Dirty Dancing might be a 'glorified porno': 'It kind of was a little risky'

No matter what she does, Jennifer Grey will forever be known as Baby, the nickname of her character in 1987's Dirty Dancing. But she admits that its success has surprised her.

"I remember being in my agent's office and seeing the breakdown [and] saying, 'I have to get this part,'" Grey said Friday on The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast. "And it was a low-budget movie, and that was before low-budget movies were happening. It was not heard of. There weren't low-budget movies. It had no cache."

Still, the A Real Pain star signed onto the film, which she recalled having had a budget of just $4.5 million, of which she received $50,000 or $100,000.

"And it kind of was a little risky," Grey said. "It kind of felt like, it's called Dirty Dancing. The sex scenes are described quite explicitly, and there's no money for me or the movie. Maybe it's just a glorified porno."

After she was cast as Frances "Baby" Houseman, the filmmakers set about finding her Johnny Castle, the professional dancer at the resort where her family is vacationing in the summer of 1963, "before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came." They liked Patrick Swayze, a professional dancer, who could easily play the sexy dancer who works at Kellerman's family resort in the Catskills and teaches Baby his moves.

She was familiar with his work — they were costars in Red Dawn — so Grey was against it. Previously, Grey has said that Swayze dished out pranks and machismo there. So she attempted to shut down the idea immediately, despite him having been classically trained.

"I know everything about the guy," she told the higher-ups. "Trust me, he never stopped telling me about all of this. I know it. I don't care. I can't afford to be with someone who's going to sabotage me, who's not gonna be someone I can trust to be serious or professional." But they convinced her to dance with him.

"Just dance with him," they told her.

As she's talked about before, Swayze apologized to her and asked her forgiveness for his past behavior. He really wanted to play Johnny.

"And then we're kind of both crying and hugging, and then we come in and then we dance," Grey said on the podcast. "And I was like, 'Oh God, It has to be him because nobody else could lead and dance like that,' and he was the perfect partner for me."

Swayze went on to star in films such as Ghost and Point Break, but Dirty Dancing remained one of his best-known roles. The actor died of pancreatic cancer in 2009. He was 57.

The movie is still pretty perfect, largely because of the chemistry between its two stars.

"We were playing two people from different worlds, and we were always from different worlds," Grey said. "And part of the energy that looks like love is energy. It's tension. It's whatever. It's complexity. And energy is all you really want. It doesn't have to be perfect."

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.