Dax Shepard on Eric Dane Friendship, Attending AA Meetings

Dax Shepard and Eric Dane didn’t always have a bromance.

However, after the Parenthood alum and the late Grey’s Anatomy actor nearly came to blows at an AA meeting, they steadily formed a bond. 

“We kept coming back to the same meeting, like neither was gonna not show up,” Shepard shared in an episode of Anderson Cooper’s podcast All There Is, which touches on grief, published April 2. “And over the course of the next two years, I found myself starting to kind of relate to him.”

As Shepard explained, he and the Euphoria actor had both grown up without their fathers, which were losses that left them with questions about how to be men. 

“He was so in search of masculine validation and it took all these shapes that I hated, that I’m sure he hated in me” Shepard said of Dane, who died at 53 in February after battling ALS. “And I remember he had his share one time, and I said, ‘I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but that’s one of my favorite shares I’ve ever heard.’”