Dax Shepard is sharing a side of his friendship with Eric Dane that few people saw before the actor’s death earlier this year.
Speaking at the New Orleans Book Festival during a conversation with Anderson Cooper, Shepard said his relationship with Dane began with anger, not friendship. According to Shepard, the two nearly got into a fistfight outside an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting after tensions between them had been building.
“Eric Dane, I can now say I met in recovery and we hated each other. I hated him,” Shepard said. “I thought he was a bit of a bully.”
He said the breaking point came after Dane allegedly confronted a younger member of the group. Shepard recalled responding, “Let’s go. Outside. Right now,” before the two walked into the parking lot prepared to fight. Other people at the meeting stepped in before anything happened.
Instead of cutting ties, both men continued attending the same meetings. Over time, Shepard said he began to understand Dane differently after hearing more about his life and childhood.
According to Shepard, Dane once shared that his father died by suicide when he was a child. “That little boy grew up without a dad, like I grew up without a dad, and he was so in search of masculine validation,” Shepard said. “It took all these shapes that I hated.”
The two eventually became close. Shepard said he later told Dane that one of his shares at the meeting was “one of my favorite shares I’ve ever heard.” Dane responded in a later meeting by saying, “I think I’ve come to fall in love with Dax.”
Shepard said the friendship continued from there, adding, “I ended up loving him so much.”
Shepard’s comments arrive just weeks after another former co-worker publicly accused Dane of being difficult off-camera. Laura Ann Tull, who worked as a background performer on Grey’s Anatomy for several years, posted on Threads after news of Dane’s death, calling him “a bully and an a-hole.”
Tull later expanded on those claims, saying she believed Dane had spoken negatively about her during her time on set. In a 2018 Medium post, she wrote that she “never spoke to Dane once directly” but believed he had influenced how others treated her. She also claimed, without evidence, that she played a role in his eventual exit from the show.
There is no indication that Tull had anything to do with Dane leaving Grey’s Anatomy. Reports at the time pointed instead to contract costs and creative changes. Dane later acknowledged he had been struggling with addiction during that period, saying it “definitely didn’t help.”
The actor also weathered other public controversies during his career, including the release of a private video in 2009 featuring Dane, his wife Rebecca Gayheart, and former beauty queen Kari Ann Peniche. Dane and Gayheart called the footage a private moment that was never meant to become public.
Dane, who later starred on Euphoria, died in February at age 53 after complications from ALS.
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