Swayze was the only actor ever considered

In previous posts, I reported that actors Billy Zane and Val Kilmer were chosen before Patrick Swayze to play the role of Johnny Castle.

However, Eliza Thompson has reported in a recent Cosmopolitan article, dated February 2, 2017, that only Swayze ever was considered. Thompson writes that screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein said:

No other actors were ever considered for Johnny except Patrick. It was always him and only him.

We looked through pictures and I said, "Oh, there’s the eyes we want," and we turned them over, and Emile [Ardolino], our director, said, "As a matter of fact he’s a Joffrey dancer."

We went after him, and when I met him, I said, "Now that I know you, if you decide not to do this, it’s hard for me to think that I’ll make the film."

I really felt that way and I still do. So it was always Patrick, only Patrick, the only one we offered it to, and a wonderful, brilliant, good man.

I still assume, however, that other actors were considered and tested. After all, Swayze might have decided to do the movie.

======

Jennifer Grey has said in a video interview (at 2:25) that when she was auditioning for the role of Baby Houseman, she thought that the role of Johnny Castle would be given to Billy Zane.

======

In the same recent Cosmopolitan article, Bergstein remarks that she still might write a sequel to Dirty Dancing.

I do have a very clear sense of a very complicated, long future that they [Baby and Johnny] have when this [the Dirty Dancing story] is over. ... I think maybe now I’ll do a sequel.

That [the sequel] is the question that people are incredibly interested in. Sometimes they grab me by the arm so that I have marks on my arm!

I think that Bergstein essentially has already written the sequel -- her 1995 movie Let It Be Me.