Tributes continue to pour in after the death of Eric Dane, and early Friday morning, his former “Grey’s Anatomy” co-star and on-screen bestie Patrick Dempsey mourned him as well.
Dane was, of course, best known for playing Mark Sloan — better known to his fellow doctors as McSteamy — on the long-running ABC hit. On the show, Sloan was best friends with Dempsey’s “McDreamy” Derek Shepherd — at least until he slept with Derek’s wife. The two eventually reconciled though, and Mark’s death on the show devastated just about everybody, onscreen and off.
Appearing on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio UK, Dempsey looked back on his friendship with Dane, and recalled the actor’s difficult final days.
“It’s hard to put into words. I feel really so sad for his children,” Dempsey said. “I was corresponding with him, we were texting so I spoke to him about a week ago and some friends of ours went in to see him and he was really starting to lose his ability to speak. He was bedridden and it was very hard for him to swallow so the quality of his life was deteriorating so rapidly.”
But, Dempsey focused on the “joy” of working with Dane, remembering him as “the funniest man.”
“I want to just remember him in that spirit because any time he was on set, he brought so much fun to it,” Dempsey said. “He had a great sense of humor. He was easy to work with, we got along instantly.”
“We hit it off because it was never really any competition,” he added. “There was just this wonderful mutual respect, he’s wickedly intelligent and I’m always going to remember those moments of fun that we had together and celebrate the joy that he did bring to people’s lives and the real loss is for us who don’t have them anymore.”
Dempsey praised Dane for bringing awareness to ALS in his final days, being open with fans about his battle with the disease, and reminding everyone to “celebrate every day like it’s our last.”
“It’s something that we have to remember and certainly in a world where there is just so much crisis and there is so much tragedy that we really need to be grateful for every moment that we have,” Dempsey continued.
“Spend time with our families, do things that are better, that benefit of other people to be of service to be kind, to be loving and these values with our leadership unfortunately that we’re seeing around the world and certainly in America with this horrible, you know, corrupt government that is currently running America, we have to remember to treat our neighbours and our friends with the right values.”
Dempsey’s full interview will air on “TFI Unplugged” on Friday evening on the Virgin Radio UK YouTube channel.
