Originally appeared on E! Online
Eric Dane believes he wasn’t the one to throw in the towel on his role on “Grey’s Anatomy.”
The actor, who played Dr. Mark “McSteamy” Sloan for more than six seasons until his character was killed off in the season nine premiere in 2012, says he thinks he was fired from the ABC medical drama.
“I didn’t leave,” Dane said on the June 24 episode of Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, “so much as, I think I was let go.”
The “Euphoria” actor said that while he was struggling with substance addiction at the time, that was not the reason for his exit.
“They didn’t let me go because of that, although it definitely didn’t help,” the 51-year-old continued. “I was starting to become — as most of these actors who have spent significant time on a show — you start to become very expensive for the network. And the network knows that the show is going to do what it’s going to do, irrespective of who they keep on it. As long as they have their [Meredith] Grey, they’re fine.”
Dane added, “I wasn’t the same guy they had hired. So I had understood when I was let go.”
E! News has reached out to reps for Shonda Rhimes‘ Shondaland, the series’ production company, and the ABC network for comment and has not heard back.
“Shonda was really great. She protected us fiercely,” Dane said. “But I was probably fired. It wasn’t ceremoniously like, ‘You’re fired,’ it was just like, ‘You’re not coming back.’”
Eric Dane is still in his villain era in “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.” The “Euphoria” star chatted with Access Hollywood’s Scott Evans at the films Los Angeles premiere and admitted although he’s played a lot of villains throughout the years, he couldn’t be more different in real life.
In July 2011, months before the premiere of season eight of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Dane’s last full season, the actor checked into a rehab center. His rep said at the time that the star was in treatment “to help him get off of pain medication that he was prescribed for a sports injury.”
On “Armchair Expert,” Dane spoke more about his addiction battle, saying that he had been sober for “three or four years” when he joined the drama series but relapsed during the Writers Guild of America’s strike in 2007.
“If you take the whole eight years on ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ I was f—– up longer than I was sober,” he said. “And that’s when things started going sideways for me.”
Following his official departure from the show, Dane went on to star on TNT’s “The Last Ship,” which ended after five seasons in 2018, and play Cal Jacobs on HBO’s “Euphoria.” He also stars with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in the new film “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” which is now in theaters.