Dirty Dancing cast member Kelly Bishop has recalled a major “switcheroo” when it came to her role in the 1987 movie.
Fans will know the actress as Baby’s mother Marjorie Houseman in the romantic film, starring Jennifer Grey and the late Patrick Swayze.
However, the 80-year-old had originally signed up to play a different, more minor character.
Speaking in a new interview with The Guardian on Wednesday, Bishop branded the last-minute change “bizarre,” while sharing her original intended role.
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She was lined up to portray a married Kellerman’s guest who takes a liking to dance teacher Johnny Castle (Swayze).
However, Bishop stepped in after the original Mrs. Houseman, Lynne Lipton, fell unwell and Miranda Garrison became cougar Vivian Pressman.
“That switcheroo was so bizarre that I thought I really must do this,” she said.
According to the piece, Bishop found the mom part “boring” but enjoyed the shoot, while being surprised by Dirty Dancing‘s success—it won an Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Song, as well as a long list of other nods.
Bishop continued: “First of all, we thought the title was really stupid. What is ‘Dirty Dancing?’
“Actually, there were some good little stories in there, a wonderful love story, but we still didn’t think it was going to be very good. Then they put the music in—including that last song we all love.”
During the interview, Bishop explained how she used to be able to do the infamous lift Baby perfects in the final scenes.
She recalled: “It was long before Dirty Dancing. I got with a dancer I’d known in Vegas. We were working on a show and, after rehearsals, he taught me to do it.
“Unfortunately, the choreographer happened to come back to the theatre to get something and he saw us doing that. And he was so angry because it was not a lift I was supposed to be doing.”
Bishop was promoting her memoir The Third Gilmore Girl in which she says the cast of Dirty Dancing thought she was having an affair with her on-screen husband Jerry Orbach. But in fact they were friends and had starred on Broadway together.
One day she made a joke in the production office about a romance between them, and was greeted with “sheepish stares and dead silence—in other words, apparently that’s exactly what they thought,” Vulture reported.
