“Grey’s Anatomy ”star Chyler Leigh reveals her regret about Eric Dane after his death

Key Points

• Chyler Leigh shares her one regret about her time with Grey’s Anatomy costar Eric Dane.

• The actors were the two halves of a fan-favorite relationship on the show, which came to a tragic end in its eighth season.

• But recalling their return in a season 17 dream sequence, Leigh wishes things had turned out a little differently. 

Chyler Leigh has a lot of love for her late costar, Eric Dane.

Months after Dane’s death at 53, his fellow Grey’s Anatomy alum is still sharing happy memories from their several seasons as on-again and off-again love interests, Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan. But along with all the joy, Leigh recently admitted to having one regret regarding her time with Dane.

Leigh told TV Insider that to this day, she is still “really bummed about” missing out on a reunion with Dane when they both returned for a season 17 dream sequence.

The infamous finale moment saw Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) hallucinate a picturesque beach meeting with Lexie and Mark while fighting for her life against COVID-19. But while they all appeared to be together on that beach, Leigh was actually miles away from her scene partners.

“We were filming all during Covid — actual Covid — and I was filming Supergirl in Vancouver,” Leigh explained. “I couldn’t go down to be there because I would have had to quarantine [for] two weeks coming back into Vancouver.”

Leigh said that since there wasn’t enough time for her to leave one set and quarantine for two weeks before filming her Grey’s return, she ended up shooting her scenes alone with a green screen.

“If there’s anything that I regret, it would be not having been able to do that,” Leigh shared.

Even without being in the same place, Leigh and Dane’s return marked a cathartic moment for fans of the show. A decade prior, Lexie and Mark’s relationship came to a tragic end. Right after Mark admitted to wanting to spend the rest of his life with her, they were both involved in the plane crash that ended season 8. The crash killed Lexie in the season 8 finale, with her final moments spent hand in hand with him, imagining the life they could have had together. Mark ended up dying in the season 9 premiere.

When they reunited with Meredith on her imagined beach, she asked if they were finally together in the afterlife, to which Mark replied, “On your beach, it looks like we are.”

As for sharing happy memories of Dane, Leigh pointed to a big moment in the Jackson-Lexie-Mark love triangle, in which Dane proved himself a perfect scene partner.

“There’s one scene where Lexie is kind of choosing between Jackson and Mark and he comes in and he just gives her this moment where you see Jackson in the background and she really does have to choose,” Leigh recalled. “I don’t know what it is about kissing, but it was a really deep moment. And you just kind of see the sparkle leave her eyes, you know? That was so up and down.”

She added, “I could pick a million [memories]. He was a wonderful human being.”

Dane died on Feb. 19 at the age of 53. He had been battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which he revealed in 2025. In the weeks and months following his tragic passing, Dane’s costars and collaborators from across his career poured out their hearts in tribute. 

Leigh opened up about the devastation of his loss last month. On an episode of the You Might Know Her From podcast, she said that she will “always look back fondly” on their time as costars, describing him as “such a wonderful scene partner.”

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She went on to share that she was in the middle of press for her Hallmark Channel series The Way Home when she learned of his death.

“My publicist called me and said, ‘Hey, I just want you to know, be prepared that Eric passed.’ Because it was going to all come out, I think the next day. I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I didn’t know how to comprehend it,'” she recalled. “Then I was on a plane ride from L.A. doing press, flying back to Nashville, that, all of a sudden, it just hit. I had to keep getting up and going to use the lavatory because I was just sobbing.”

Leigh added that she is now, to an extent, at peace with the loss. “I can kind of be able to see past the absolute devastation of it, and then be able to appreciate even more so those incredible moments that we had together,” she said.

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