Eric Dane is getting real about his Grey’s Anatomy exit. It’s been almost 12 years since Dane’s Dr. Mark Sloan, aka McSteamy, had a surge and died in the Season 9 premiere following the plane crash in the Season 8 finale. Via Us Weekly, the Euphoria star got candid while speaking with Dax Shepard on his Armchair Podcast about the unfortunate departure.
At the time of his departure, Dane was struggling with addiction, noting he thinks he “was let go” but that the producers “didn’t let me go because of that.” Dane explained, “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.”
UNITED STATES – SEPTEMBER 08: GREY’S ANATOMY – “Life During Wartime” – To help Bailey become the best general surgeon at Seattle Grace, the Chief gives her new power, new responsibility, and the challenge of removing a young girl’s inoperable tumor, as the new head of trauma, Owen Hunt, challenges both the attending doctor’s methods and the residents’ surgical abilities, on “Grey’s Anatomy,” THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30 (9:00-10:01 p.m., ET) on the Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images Television Network. (Photo by Eric McCandless/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)
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“I wasn’t the same guy they had hired,” Dane continued. “So I understood when I was let go. And Shonda 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–-ed 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.”
Dane joined Grey’s Anatomy as a guest in Season 2 before being upped to series regular for Season 3. After Mark was injured and went into a coma following the plane crash, the series had killed him off and it was as heartbreaking as ever. He did reprise his role in Season 17 for one of Meredith’s COVID dreams on the beach. Those dream sequences also saw the returns of T.R. Knight, Patrick Dempsey, and Chyler Leigh, whose character also died as a result of the plane crash.
While McSteamy’s death was devastating, and even more devastating now knowing how it happened and why, in a way, his on-screen departure made sense. Before Leigh’s Lexie Grey died, she and Mark admitted they still loved each other. Having Mark suffer through her loss would be equally as heartbreaking, and at least with him also dying, fans were able to hope they were together in the afterlife. Luckily, that was basically confirmed when they both returned for Season 17.