“I knew nothing at all,” says Grey of Shamblin.
“I Googled her, and I got the visual right between the eyes.”
“I was completely riveted.
Jennifer Grey in ‘Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation’.Lifetime
I thought, ‘Why me?'”
she recalls with a laugh.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The story of Gwen Shamblin and Remnant Fellowship is completely fascinating and bizarre.
Vincent Walsh and Jennifer Grey in ‘Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation’.Lifetime
What, if anything, did you know about Gwen and her church before this role?
JENNIFER GREY:I knew nothing at all.
I was completely riveted.
Vincent Walsh and Jennifer Grey in ‘Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation’.Lifetime
I thought, “Why me?”
I felt so much heaviness around it.
I said to Lifetime, if I do this, there are three conditions.
If you are not willing to pony up [for] that, I can’t do it.
Those were my terms.
She is so happy to get her mug out there.
[Laughs]
How did all that footage help you replicate her distinctive voice and cadence?
Nobody wants to have the accent acting at you.
Her name is Liz Himelstein.
I started working with her as soon as I got the part.
We would just do an hour every morning.
She was able to modulate me from doing the accent to starting tofeelthe accent.
I’d say, [in Gwen’s Southern accent], “Aham trying!”
I would listen toher [appearance on]Larry Kingover and over.
When she is trying to be very specific and perhaps performative, she wouldn’t drop her i-n-gs.
She would be like, “I amliving.”
Do you think she began with good intentions?
I’m thinking that somebody hurt her really bad some church, some family member, whatever it is.
The self-loathing is the underlying issue.
They start to project onto her this love, this adoration, this idolization.
She is basically being treated like a version of God.
There’s that famous quote: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
That’s how I see it.
Your transformation is incredible.
I’m very tight with Jamie Lee Curtis.
And she said, “Okay, I’m sending you a number right now.
His name is Rob Pickens, and he did my wigs forHalloween.
And I said, “I haven’t closed my deal.”
And she said, “I don’t care.
It takes a long time.
This shoots in two weeks?
you oughta get a wig fittingtoday.”
So, I call him immediately.
He said, “Well, you need at least two wigs, probably four.”
There was one wig where he said, “We could repurpose Jamie’s old wig fromHalloween.
We can use that as the base.”
And then he then started making the other wigs.
He measured my head with saran wrap and tape, and I’ve never done any of that stuff.
He didn’t want to cut it yet.
She cut it and then she added extensions to it.
Was the big wig heavy to wear?
Because it’s a really good wig, it was never heavy.
It was light as a feather.
The wig was not uncomfortable, but the tightness under it [was].
That’s a lot of hair to wrap up inside a wig cap!
The hair got bigger and the body got smaller.
She had a very produced wedding.
It was very much like her life was a reality show.
What was that like to film?
Because there’s just so much trust involved when you do these things.
I just was an actor for hire.
And this was not a sexy scene.
[Laughs] But for them, it was the highlight of sexy.
[Laughs]
By the final years of her life, Gwen Shamblin was visually anorexic.
You’re already such a petite person, but did you choose to lose any weight for the role?
It’s a very, very serious psychiatric disease.
There is treatment for, and it is very hard to recover from.
It’s so critical that people seek help because it will kill you.
For me, I’m always the same weight.
I’ve got one of those bodies that’s just the same.
It’s changing, but my weight is very constant.
I like my boobs and my butt!
But what happens is as soon as I lose weight, I just get, like, really bony.
Whenwe spoke last year, you mentioned that theDirty Dancingsequelscript was in the works.
I’ll tell you where it stands.
There’s nothing imminent I can share with you at this moment…
I would love spill some tea, because it would be fun.
I’m not being stingy, I just can’t.
Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvationpremieres Saturday, Feb. 4 at 8 p.m. on Lifetime.
