Jennifer Grey, 62, opens up about how ‘terrifying’ it was to play Christian diet guru Gwen Shamblin

Jennifer Gray has opened up about how “scary” it was playing Christian diet guru Gwen Shamblin in her upcoming Lifetime movie, saying she struggled to maintain her weight while playing “the personification of anorexia nervosa.”

The ‘Dirty Dancing’ star, 62, looks unrecognizable as the matte blonde church leader in the trailer for ‘Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation’, which opens Saturday, February 4.

The TV movie shows how the registered dietitian developed a cult following with her controversial faith-based ‘Weigh Down Workshop’ before founding her Remnant Fellowship Church in Tennessee in the late 1990s.

Shamblin, who preached about loving God over food, died in 2021 after his private plane crashed into a lake. That same year, she was the subject of the HBO Max docuseries “The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin.”

In an interview with entertainment weekly, Gray admitted that he “knew absolutely nothing” about Shamblin when he first received the script. After googling the diet guru, he watched the trailer for ‘The Way Down’ with fascination and horror.

‘I felt such a heaviness around him. My first thought was, “Well, this is a terrifying prospect to play someone so dark, who was a real person recently on this earth,” she recalled.

‘And the next thought was, how can I be a part of a story that really substantiates a very powerful voice in our culture, which is about [the importance of] body size and perfectionism?’

Gray worried that by taking on the role, she would be promoting Shamblin’s dangerous teachings on weight and self-esteem.

“I feel like as human beings living in this culture, we’re all very vulnerable to the voice of Gwen Shamblin saying there’s a shape and a size and a number we have to reach to be lovable, worthy of God’s love. “. , worthy of attention, worthy of success,’ she explained.

One of his conditions for accepting the role was to be able to use the film as a platform to counter Shamblin’s message that “it’s best to be skinny.”

‘She was the personification of anorexia nervosa, which has one of the highest or second highest death rates [among eating disorders],’ she said.

“I thought if I could do this and use it as a platform to raise awareness about seeking treatment and show the folly and error of your message, then I’d be interested.”

Gray said he filmed a public service announcement for the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) to be released with the film to combat Shamblin’s rhetoric.

The actress noted that she’s thankful she’s “never had an eating disorder,” explaining that her body continues to change as she ages, but her “weight is very constant.”

She had no intention of altering her body in any way to play diet guru, but to her dismay, the long hours she worked led to unintentional weight loss.

“My biggest problem is that when I’m working, I would be doing my hair and makeup for two hours, and then I would work 12, 14 hour days and then I would drive to the place,” she explained.

“I’m not very good at eating junk food, so my biggest challenge was trying to maintain my weight.” I didn’t try to lose weight, but I was losing weight and I didn’t like it. I like my tits and my ass! But what happens is that as soon as I lose weight, I get really skinny.

Sarah Paulson will also play Shamblin in a scripted adaptation of the HBO Max documentary ‘The Way Down.’

Raised in the ultra-strict Church of Christ, Shamblin was a trained dietitian who started her Weight Workshops in the 1980s.

The seminars were held in churches and, as word of mouth spread, they grew to more than 250,000 subscribers in more than 14,000 churches in 70 countries.

He expanded his business throughout the 1990s with T-shirts, hats, and a host of books, including ‘The Divine Diet’ and ‘What Would Jesus Eat?’

The Reverend Rafael Martinez, a cult interventionist, explained in the docuseries ‘The Way Down’ that Shamblin and his diet book were a ‘massive media hit’.

‘The Weigh Down Diet: Inspirational Way to Lose Weight, Stay Slim, and Find a New you’ sold over 400,000 copies, and was featured in everything from ’20/20′ to ‘Larry King Live’.

He also embarked on national tours where fans appeared on stage holding their biggest garments to celebrate his success to a cheering audience.

Putting a biblical twist on his approach, Shamblin taught people to ‘honor God within their body’. He often said, ‘Every time you look for food, 15 to 20 times a day, run to God.’

In 1999, Shamblin founded Remnant Fellowship Church in Brentwood, Tennessee, to help people “move away from the love of food and toward the love of God.”

Touting the love of Jesus as a diet plan made Shamblin fabulously wealthy. According to the documentary, he amassed $20 million in real estate assets across the country. He drove a Porsche and lived in a pre-Civil War plantation house known as Ashlawn.

After divorcing her husband of 40 years, she remarried in 2018 to former ‘Tarzan’ actor Joe Lara. A former member called him a ‘chaperon’ on the series.

Among the many expensive gifts Shamblin lavished on his toy-boy were flying lessons. Lara was piloting a Cessna 501 when it crashed into Percy Priest Lake on May 21, 2021, immediately killing all seven passengers on board, including his wife.

Since ‘The Way Down’ first premiered in late 2021, Remnant Fellowship has countered negative publicity in a series of promotional videos that encourage inclusivity and emphasize their ‘family’ values.