{"id":525888,"date":"2026-04-11T22:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T22:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/525888\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T22:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T22:25:10","slug":"dax-shepard-hated-eric-dane-nearly-fought-him-before-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/525888\/","title":{"rendered":"Dax Shepard ‘Hated’ Eric Dane, Nearly Fought Him Before Friendship"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDax Shepard<\/a> is opening up about how he formed an unexpected friendship with the late Eric Dane<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tDuring a recent chat with CNN\u2019s Anderson Cooper at the New Orleans Book Festival, Shepard explained that he initially \u201chated\u201d Dane and nearly engaged in a fight with him. But after learning about his upbringing through AA meetings, the two eventually connected and became friends. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEric Dane, I can now say I met in recovery and we hated each other. I hated him!\u201d Shepard said. \u201cI thought he was a bit of a bully. And we were in a meeting [and] he threatened a younger member of the group, and this had been simmering for a long time, and I said, \u2018Let\u2019s go. Outside. Right now.\u2019 It was on. And we walked outside to a fist fight in the driveway of an AA meeting.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe crowd laughed, and the Parenthood actor noted that people intervened and broke up the fight. \u201cGod bless both of us. We kept coming back to the same meeting. Over the course of the next two years, I found myself starting to kind of relate to him. I heard his story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Shepard got to know him better, he said he began to understand the pain behind Dane\u2019s behavior.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHis father shot himself in his house when he was a little boy. And his mom came upstairs and said, \u2018I\u2019ll tell you what happened if you promise that you won\u2019t cry,’\u201d Shepard said. \u201cSo that little boy held onto that. And then that little boy grew up without a dad, like I grew up without a dad, and he was so in search of masculine validation, and it took all these shapes that I hated. That I\u2019m sure he hated in me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI remember he had his share one time and I said, \u2018I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m gonna say this, but that\u2019s one of my favorite shares I\u2019ve ever heard,\u2019\u201d the 51-year-old recalled. \u201cMaybe a week or two later, one of his shares, he said, \u2018I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m gonna say this, but I think I\u2019ve come to fall in love with Dax.\u2019 And then we became friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLater, Shepard said that he would often visit Dane\u2019s home, where they bonded over not having a dad around and the meaning of being a man.\u00a0\u201cI came to fall in love with a very scared man trying and hoping he had become a man, and I related,\u201d he said. \u201cI ended up loving him so much.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tDane, known for his memorable roles as McSteamy<\/a> in Grey\u2019s Anatomy and Cal Jacobs, Nate Jacobs\u2019 (Jacob Elordi) dad in Euphoria, revealed he was diagnosed<\/a> with ALS in April of last year after first experiencing symptoms a year and a half earlier. He died in February<\/a> at the age of 53. <\/p>\n

\n\tShepard said, \u201cFor a person who was so hellbent on being hyper-masculine and incredibly fit, to have agreed to become the face of this disease, completely diminished, I found to be the bravest thing he\u2019d done in all these pursuits of manliness.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tBoth men have been open about their struggles with addiction. Dane also revealed he was \u201clet go\u201d from Grey\u2019s Anatomy because he \u201cwasn\u2019t the same guy\u201d they hired during his battle with addiction, during a June 24, 2024, appearance on Shepard\u2019s Armchair Expert<\/a> podcast. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dax Shepard is opening up about how he formed an unexpected friendship with the late Eric Dane. During…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,90351,96,33691,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-525888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-dax-shepard","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-eric-dane","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}