What to Know
The same thing goes in Hollywood as it does most often in the school playground or even in a work setting when you’re older meeting a coworker for the first time, you don’t always hit things off with someone. In fact, sometimes there’s animosity there and you’re not even sure why until you dig a little deeper. Such was the case for podcast host and actor, Dax Shepard, as he recalls meeting the late Grey’s Anatomy star, Eric Dane, for the first time. The really interesting part? The pair almost got into an actual fist fight outside of an AA meeting! Pretty intense, right?
Dax Shepard shared that he “hated” Eric Dane when they first met.
Sitting down to a conversation with CNN host, Anderson Cooper, at the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University, actor and writer, Dax Shepard, shared some insight into his longtime friendship with the late Euphoria actor, Eric Dane.
Dax shared that he felt he could now say that the pair met in a rather unorthodox place — well, for some people. “I can now say I met him in recovery, and we hated each other. I hated him!” Dax shared with a bit of a chuckle.
Kind of an odd thing to say about a friend who died, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here.
Dax went on to share that the pair met at an AA meeting and he found him to be “arrogant” and “a bit of a bully” right off the jump. He explained that Eric allegedly “threatened a younger member of the group,” and it had been “simmering for a long time,” so Dax had finally had it.
At that time, he said to him, “‘Let’s go. Outside. Right now.’ It was on. And [they] walked outside to a fist fight in the driveway of an AA meeting.”
Well, that doesn’t sound like the best thing for recovery.
The pair continued to attend the same meetings and eventually developed a very real friendship.
The really important part though, especially for those in recovery, is that they kept coming back to those meetings, despite the hard feelings.
“God 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,” Dax shared.
Dax went on to spill that Eric shared his story in the AA meeting and told everyone that “his father shot himself in his house when he was a little boy. And his mom came upstairs and said, ‘I’ll tell you what happened if you promise that you won’t cry.’ So that little boy held onto that.” How incredibly tragic.
The Armchair Expert host shared that he “grew up without a dad,” so he could relate to that struggle, especially in terms of how it might come out in one’s addiction.
After the pair had been sharing their stories in their meetings, Eric said to him one day, “‘I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but I think I’ve come to fall in love with Dax.’ And then we became friends.”
That’s actually a pretty funny story of two men misunderstanding one another and eventually coming to see that they have a lot more in common than they think.
You really never know when a longlasting bond will form.
It sounds like these two men eventually formed a very real bond over not having their dads in their life.
Dax also shared that after they broke the ice, he would go over to Eric’s house all the time and the pair would “chat and connect on the vacuum left when you don’t have a dad around.”
Over the course of many conversations and get-togethers, Dax said that he “came to fall in love with a very scared man trying and hoping he had become a man” and he “ended up loving him so much.”
Ugh. Does anyone have a tissue?
There’s something very relatable in learning that two Hollywood actors who literally almost fought one another eventually came to understand and love each other on a deep level after they let their guards down and just listened. May all men learn a lesson here.
READ NEXT: ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Actress Claims Eric Dane Was a ‘Bully,’ ‘Coward’ & ‘Narcissist’
