Lifetime“You couldn’t come up with something more bananas to me,” Jennifer Grey tells us of her newest role that finds her playing controversial Remnant Fellowship Church founder and Christian diet guru Gwen Shamblin in Lifetime’s Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation (Saturday, Feb. 4, at 8pm ET/PT). “You know how they say you couldn’t write this @#$%? You couldn’t write this @#$%!”
Grey, who catapulted to fame in the ’80s with her roles in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, has always been attracted to projects that push her out of her comfort zone and stretch her creativity — including her 2010 stint on Dancing With the Stars, where she and her partner Derek Hough walked away as the season winners. This project was no exception, and it included a few career firsts for the star.
“When this offer came in, I had no conception of who Gwen Shamblin was. I hadn’t seen the HBO documentary [The Way Down: God, Greed and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin] that a lot of people I knew had seen. And I immediately downloaded it, watched it, was appalled and stunned, and thrilled to be able to put my mind around playing this person who couldn’t be more of a leap for me,” she shares. “I’m always fascinated by charismatic leaders (let’s call it that). And the fact that people have hooked into the zeitgeist. … I’m fascinated by the psychological, the power that someone can gain from really hooking into a need in the culture and how much people want to turn over their will and their lives to this person who they believe will deliver the results that have eluded them.”
She’s speaking of Shamblin, who rose to fame with her 1997 bestselling book The Weigh Down Diet: Gwen Shamblin’s Inspirational Way to Lose Weight, Stay Slim, and Find a New You and her Weigh Down workshops, which eventually morphed into the megachurch she founded.
The film spans roughly 20 years of Shamblin’s life, from her humble beginnings to her rise to power. “Trying to understand how this empire was built. How this enormous power was accumulated and attained by this woman who founded a church in Tennessee, in this very Christian conservative landscape that traditionally had only been dominated by men” was a gripping exploration, Grey says. “How this woman who grew up in the Church of Christ, where women were extremely disempowered, where it was all about the men and very Handmaid’s Tale-like — I was thinking, ‘How do you go from that to becoming this powerhouse person who believes that she is here to help save people through a faith-based diet?’
“For me, it was the most foreign idea and the most dangerous idea that made me so sad that people were so willing to follow her and to believe that she somehow had the inside track to God and what it meant to live a holy life, a faith-based life.”
Transforming Into Gwen: The Craziest Wig Story
Much of Shamblin’s life was documented on film and served as the film’s source material, from her early preachings and her chat series Life With Gwen & Joe (a series she did with her second husband Joe Lara, the Tarzan actor turned church handyman turned religious leader) to her guest appearances on Larry King Live and The View. Shamblin had a larger-than-life public persona, and her towering hair that was teased to the moon was a definite standout.
Before Grey closed the deal to star as Shamblin, she consulted with her longtime friend and screen legend Jamie Lee Curtis, who suggested she immediately contact the greatest wig creator ever, Rob Pickens.
“I called him because I do whatever Jamie tells me to do,” Grey laughs. “I called Rob and said, ‘Hey, Jamie told me I have to call you. I haven’t closed this deal, but this is the picture of the woman.’ I told him that I would only do this if I could get some really great wigs and have a really great dialect coach.”
Grey got both.
“Those were the two things I’ve never done. I’ve never worn a wig and I’ve never done a dialect,” she shares. “I’m not interested in doing a job unless I’m really scared because that makes it interesting to me. When it’s scary, that’s when you’re like, ‘OK, I guess this is time to, this is go.’”
The wig that Grey dons during Shamblin’s younger years (when Shamblin had a bob) is a story in itself, as Pickens repurposed Jamie’s old wig from Halloween.
“I have a recycled wig, and then I have that giant mane,” Grey says, also crediting her amazing hairdresser who brought the crazy to her character’s later-in-life hairdo.
“You could see as she became more powerful, her look became much more extreme. And it was like you could track the trajectory of her emotional life through her hair and her makeup and her weight,” Grey concludes. “You can just see the decline of her mental health and her physical health. And then the hair becomes crazier and crazier.”
Shamblin’s reign came to a tragic end in May 2021, when the plane that her husband Joe was flying crashed shortly after takeoff, killing Gwen, Joe, their son-in-law and four other church leaders.
It’s indeed a story you just couldn’t have written.
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