Just over a decade after his departure from the show, Eric Dane candidly reflects on why he was written out of Grey’s Anatomy. After a guest appearance in season 2, Dane became a series regular in season 3 of the Shonda Rhimes-created medical drama, starring as plastic surgeon Mark Sloan, who became better known by the nickname McSteamy as the show progressed. Following five well-received seasons as the character, McSteamy was written out of the show in season 9, with the first two episodes showing his death following the Grey’s Anatomy season 8 finale’s airplane crash that also killed Chyler Leigh’s Lexie Grey.
Though a variety of reasons have been given for his exit from the show, Dane is now telling his side of the story behind his Grey’s Anatomy departure on the latest episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast. The McSteamy actor was very candid in his reflection of why he left the medical drama, expressing his belief he was “let go“, despite some reports of budget cuts forcing a trimming of the show’s cast, and that the network was ultimately concerned about his growing struggles with substance abuse. See what Dane explained below:
I think I was let go. They didn’t let me go because of that, although it definitely didn’t help. 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 Grey, they’re fine. I wasn’t the same guy they had hired. So I had understood when I was let go. And Shonda [Rhimes] was really great. She protected us fiercely.
She protected us publicly. She protected us privately. … But I was probably fired. It wasn’t ceremoniously like, “You’re fired,” it was just like, “You’re not coming back.” If you take the whole eight years on Grey’s Anatomy, I was f——d up longer than I was sober. And that’s when things started going sideways for me. It was overwhelming, and I think I just wanted to pretend that it wasn’t and that I was comfortable with it. Act like you’ve been there, but you haven’t been there.
As Dane alludes to in the above comments, McSteamy’s exit from Grey’s Anatomy came at a time of some emotional turmoil for the actor. A few years prior to his departure, a video surfaced of him, his former wife Rebecca Gayheart and model Kari Ann Peniche enjoying drugs while they were naked. The year before his exit also saw Dane check into a treatment facility for a prescription drug dependency, all of which aligns with the timeline he mentions above of a difficult few years in which he was no longer “the same guy” ABC hired for the role.
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In spite of his personal struggles, Dane’s Grey’s Anatomy exit remains one of the most impactful for longtime fans of the show. While showrunners Tony Phelan and Joan Rater could have simply explained Sloan died after the shocking season 8 finale, as many other shows have done before, they instead offered a meaningful closing arc for Dane’s character. Between flashbacks to his relationship with Lexie, as well as finally doing the right thing and admitting his love for her to his girlfriend Julia and urging his protégé Jackson to always fight for those he loves, Sloan went out on one of the highest notes for his character.
Beyond the bittersweet nature of his getting to be with Lexie following both of their deaths, McSteamy’s Grey’s Anatomy death also left quite a lasting impression on the interconnected universe of shows. Not only was the hospital renamed after Sloan and Lexie, but audiences also got to watch as the likes of Kate Walsh’s Addison, who led the Private Practice spinoff, and Patrick Dempsey’s Derek Shepherd rocked by the loss of their friend and process it with the help of those around him. With Grey’s Anatomy season 17 also confirming he and Lexie remained together in the afterlife, it’s hard to deny just how impactful McSteamy’s exit was.
All 20 seasons of
Grey’s Anatomy
, including Dane’s tenure, are available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu.
Source: Armchair Expert
Grey’s Anatomy is considered one of the great television shows of our time, winning several awards and four Emmys. The high-intensity medical drama follows Meredith Grey and the team of doctors at Grey Sloan Memorial, who are faced with life-or-death decisions on a daily basis. They seek comfort from one another, and, at times, more than just friendship. Together they discover that neither medicine nor relationships can be defined in black and white.
