Grey will play the controversial religious leader, known for the Christian weight loss program The Weigh Down in the 1980s.
Jennifer Grey shared a sneak peek of her impressive transformation for the upcoming Lifetime film Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation on Wednesday.
In the photo, posted to Instagram, Grey sports teased blonde hair and thick makeup that almost perfectly emulates the controversial religious figure.
"call me gwen," she captioned the post. Grey credited hairstylist Lyne Lapiana and Wig Maker Associates founder Rob Pickens as the talent behind the striking look.
Shamblin died in a plane crash in 2021 after rising to global fame for her development of the Christian weight loss program The Weigh Down in the 1980s. The diet claimed that people had "let food become our master" instead of God, and gained international attention throughout the 1990s. In 1999, she founded the Remnant Fellowship Church, which also featured weight loss as one of its main tenets.
Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation will premiere in February, on the heels of HBO's documentary series The Way Down: God, Greed and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin that came out in April. Per Variety, Sarah Paulson is also set to take on Shamblin's character for a scripted version of the HBO docuseries.
In her time away from the Gwen Shamblin set, Grey is also working on reprising her role as Frances "Baby" Houseman in the upcoming Dirty Dancing sequel.
She "returns to Kellerman's in the next chapter," a release revealed at CinemaCon in April. "It was lightning in a bottle, it's like this thing happened, and it's so beautiful, and I can't explain it. No one can explain it," Grey told People at the time. "We're working on this sequel, I'm working on it with Lionsgate and working on the script."
Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation premieres on Lifetime on Feb. 4, 2023.
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