Jennifer Grey jumped at the chance to star alongside Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain

Jennifer Gray has revealed she has been a huge fan of Kieran Culkin since being wowed by his performance in ‘Succession’.

Jennifer Grey admits getting to star alongside Kieran Culkin is what initially drew her to ‘A Real Pain’.

The ‘Dirty Dancing’ star, 64, has huge admiration for 42-year-old Culkin’s acting in HBO’s ‘Succession’ and didn’t care what the script for the 2024 buddy road comedy-drama film – which was written and directed by Jessie Eisenberg, who also co-stars – entailed because she got to work with the pair.

She told Red magazine: “I was trained on [Culkin] from the first time I saw him on the show.

I knew I was seeing somebody that had the kind of magic that I respond to.”

It was a double win for the star when she read the script.

She continued: “I just was like, ‘Well, I’m doing this, no matter what it reads like’, and then every page of the script was just … am I dreaming? This is exactly my kind of movie, exactly my sensibility, exactly the kind of work that I want to be near, around, involved in.”

The film follows two estranged Jewish cousins, David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin), who travel to Poland after their grandmother dies to see where she came from and end up joining a Holocaust tour, and they meet Grey’s character Marcia along the way.

Meanwhile, Grey, who gained global acclaim when she starred alongside the late Patrick Swayze (Johnny Castle) as Frances “Baby” Houseman in rom-com classic ‘Dirty Dancing’ in 1987, admitted that while she is excited about the planned sequel, she is conscious of how much the original meant to fans.

Asked if she is looking forward to giving fans what they want, she said: “Oh, 100 per cent. But I’m very particular and stringent. I’m very specific about the authenticity of the experience and what the fans deserve, because I have such reverence for their experience and the meaning it holds for so many people. I think of it as extremely precious and rare.”