Jennifer Grey Says Madonna Wrote “Express Yourself” About The Actress’ Breakup With Matthew Broderick

Amy Sussman/Getty Images

Jennifer Grey Says Madonna Wrote “Express Yourself” About The Actress’ Breakup With Matthew Broderick

Amy Sussman/Getty Images

In a couple weeks, Dirty Dancing star Jennifer Grey is publishing her first-ever memoir. In an excerpt from it that was just released via People, Grey says that Madonna told her that “Express Yourself” was written about the actress’ breakup with Matthew Broderick, who she dated for four years after meeting him on the set of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Madonna and Grey were close friends during this era — they starred alongside each other in the 1989 film Bloodhounds Of Broadway. “She told me she wrote ‘Express Yourself’ about me breaking up with Matthew,” Grey wrote in her memoir. The first time Grey heard the song was when Madonna played it for her in a car while Grey was staying in a log cabin with Johnny Depp, who she dated shortly after breaking up with Broderick. “She said, ‘Come into my car.’ And I got in her Mercedes where she had a really good sound system and she was like, ‘Listen to this song I just did. It’s about you.'”

So is “Express Yourself” really about her breaking up with Broderick? Grey notes: “I wrote [Madonna] an email where I asked, ‘Did you just tell that to everyone?'” Apparently there was no answer, leaving this story tantalizingly open-ended.

Side note: The cover art for Grey’s memoir was designed by Jamie Lee Curtis. Fun!

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