Matthew Broderick and Jennifer Grey have rarely spoken out about their 1987 car crash that claimed the lives of two women — but that all changed when the Dirty Dancing actress candidly opened up about the fatal accident 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,” the Out of the Corner author revealed to Entertainment Tonight about the crash, which happened on a rainy night in Ireland with Broderick behind the wheel and the actress in the passenger seat. (The Ferris Bueller’s Day Off costars were in a relationship at the time.)
“I thought he was dead,” Grey continued. “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.”
The Red Dawn star further told the outlet that the head-on collision was one of the “top three traumas in my life, maybe top one.”
The fatal crash — which happened just days before Dirty Dancing was released — changed Grey’s life forever. “It’s very hard to describe when you have a near-death experience and are present for the death of other people,” she continued. “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.”
The victims killed in the crash were Margaret Doherty, who was 63 at the time of her death, and her daughter, Anna Gallagher, who was 28.
Broderick, who pled guilty to the charge of careless driving and paid a $175 fine — but was never charged with vehicular manslaughter — was frantically worried about the victims of the crash immediately following the collision.
“He kept saying, ‘Did I hurt them? Did I hurt them?’” a member of the fire brigade recalled at the time.
“I think about the family in Ireland all the time,” Grey noted in her May 2022 interview with ET. The Producers alum does as well.
“It was extremely difficult coming to grips with what happened,” Broderick, who met with the surviving family members, confessed in 2002, though he noted that the passage of time — and therapy — has helped.
For his part, Martin Doherty, Margaret’s son and Anna’s brother, has forgiven the Broadway actor for the fatal accident.
“He didn’t kill my mother and sister deliberately,” he said in 2002 via the New York Post. “There were strong feelings at the time, but I have since forgiven him and feel no anger toward him.”
Scroll down for everything Broderick and Grey have said about the tragic accident: