Acting for Salvation? The tragic fatal accident that haunts Jennifer Grey till this day
Lifetime’s new film, ‘Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation’ premiered on Saturday, February 4 at 8 pm. The biographical original film stars Jennifer Grey, who plays the religious leader and Christian diet guru Gwen Shamblin, who founded the Remnant Fellowship Church in 1999 and built an empire by combining a diet plan called the Weigh Down Workshop with Biblical teachings.
Talking about playing the role of Shamblin, Grey said as previously reported, “this is a terrifying prospect to play somebody so dark, who was a real person just recently on this earth.” Shamblin died in a plane crash along with six more people on May 29, 2021, when Cessna C501 crashed into Percy Priest Lake near Smyrna, Tennessee. However, there is another incident that terrifies Grey even today. The day before the premiere of 'Dirty Dancing', Grey was involved in a car crash on August 5, 1987, while vacationing in Ireland with actor Matthew Broderick, who was her then-boyfriend. They both survived but the crash, during which Broderick was driving, left a mother and daughter dead. The victims were Margaret Doherty, who was 63 at the time of her death, and her daughter, Anna Gallagher, who was 28, reports US Magazine.
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'I think about the family in Ireland all the time'
“The car accident in Ireland was, I would say, top three traumas of my life, maybe top one. It’s very hard to describe when you have a near-death experience and are present for the death of other people. Being alone on a country road in the middle of nowhere with nobody else around or conscious was pretty terrifying … It led to so many other things in my life," revealed the 62-year-old star in an interview with Entertainment Tonight in May 2022. "I was the sole living witness, because Matthew had survived, but he was unconscious and had amnesia and was very badly injured. I thought he was dead. I didn't even know there were two other women who were tragically killed at the time. It's just something that you just don't come back from in the same way."
"I wasn't holding any information that people seem to think I did because they wanted an answer and there was no answer because it was an accident. And [Broderick] was a great driver, and nobody was drinking. It was just an accident. And it was tragic, and I think about the family in Ireland all the time." Just a year later after the accident, in 1988, Grey and Broderick parted ways.
The aftermath of fatal accident
Grey survived but she received medical treatment and continued to experience painful headaches. In 2001, Grey married actor and director Clark Gregg and gave birth to a daughter Stella. But health struggles continued. "I tried massage, heat pads, ice, anti-inflammatories—anything and everything that could offer relief. Nothing offered long-term results," she said, as quoted by Brain&Life. Then, in 2009, she underwent a routine physical. Spine surgeon Dr Robert Bray found Grey's results to be "very abnormal." He described, "When I tapped her reflexes, they were very jumpy, which is a sign that something is pressing against the spinal cord. X-rays showed that her neck had a dramatic angulation (sharp bend) and there was slippage of one vertebrae onto another, to a dangerous extent."
He added, "The amount of slippage was actually cutting off the area through which the spinal canal runs. As a result of these injuries, there was no fluid around Jennifer's spinal cord – none. That means if she fell, slipped on the dance floor, or experienced a sudden head movement or minor rear-end car accident, she could have been paralysed." He performed several operations on Grey and during that he found that she has a cancerous growth in her thyroid. She underwent two surgeries to have the cancerous thyroid removed.
While Broderick pled guilty to the charge of careless driving and paid a $175 fine, however, was never charged with vehicular manslaughter.
