John Leguizamo made up with Patrick Swayze over ‘To Wong Foo’ feud before his death

John Leguizamo reveals he and Patrick Swayze put the past behind them after their feud on the set of To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.

Ahead of the film’s 30th anniversary, Leguizamo revealed that he made up with Swayze “the polite way” before Swayze’s death in 2009.

“We were never in the same location, so that was kind of difficult. I’m a New Yorker and he was West Coast,” Leguizamo told PEOPLE. “But we did contact each other through letters and publicists; the polite way of doing it. And we made up. It would’ve been better in person, obviously.”

Looking back at their long-held beef, Leguizamo admitted that he’s “sometimes … not the most mature person in the room, maybe.”

“I don’t know what it is,” he added. “Sometimes I hold grudges. Yeah, I’m going to keep going to therapy and someday I’ll fix all this.”

Leguizamo and Swayze starred along with Wesley Snipes in the 1995 cult classic comedy about three drag queens from New York City road tripping across the country to get to a beauty pageant in Los Angeles.

Leguizamo, 65, has spoken previously about how he and Swayze, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2009 at 57, had beef while making the movie, including how their fight almost turned physical at one point (both Leguizamo and Swayze detailed their different accounts of that story in their respective memoirs: Leguizamo’s Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends: My Life, and Swayze’s posthumous The Time of My Life).

In May 2024, Leguizamo said it was “difficult” working with Swayze after Andy Cohen called him an “absolute angel” on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live.

“Hmm. That’s different than what I experienced,” Leguizamo explained. “Rest in peace, I love [Patrick]. He was just neurotic, and I’m neurotic too but, I don’t know … it was difficult working with him. Just neurotic, I think maybe a tiny bit insecure.”

Leguizamo went on to add that he and Snipes “vibed because, you know, we’re people of color, and we’ve got each other. And I’m also an improviser, and [Patrick] didn’t like that.”

According to Leguizamo, Swayze “couldn’t keep up with” his improv, “and it would make him mad and upset sometimes.”

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“He’d be like, ‘Are you going to say a line like that?'” Leguizamo recalled. “I’d go, ‘You know me. I’m going to do me. I’m going to just keep making up lines.’ He goes, ‘Well, can you just say the line the way it is?’ I go, ‘I can’t.’ And the director [Beeban Kidron] didn’t want me to.”

The actor went on to explain how his deviations from the material improved his character, Chi-Chi Rodriguez.

“I invented my role. I rewrote that role,” Leguizamo said. “I expanded that role, ’cause that role was nothing. Douglas Carter Beane may disagree, ’cause he wrote the script, but he knows what I brought to it. He knows. He’s incredible.”