Eric Dane spoke with Brad Falchuk for a wide-ranging interview nearly four months before his death at 53.
“We reached out about him doing the show and then, as with all the guests the request is always, ‘Will you just sit down with me and we’ll chat a little bit about the show and see if there is a rapport?’” Falchuk, 54, told Extra on Friday, February 20, of his Famous Last Words series for Netflix. “Eric and I sat down and had dinner at his house, and we connected very deeply, very quickly.”
Dane, who announced in April 2025 that he had been diagnosed with ALS, died on Thursday, February 19. An interview between the Grey’s Anatomy alum and Falchuk premiered on Netflix the following day.
“He was so honest and vulnerable and easy and funny and charming,” Falchuk recalled to Extra of meeting Dane before his final interview. “We just had a great dinner and then chatted one more time before [we] jumped in a few weeks later.”
Falchuk interviewed Dane for Famous Last Words in November 2025, touching on the late actor’s Hollywood career, sobriety milestones, ALS battle and eventual mortality, as well as his family. (Dane is survived by his two daughters, whom he shared with Rebecca Gayheart.)
“He was very open. He said there were no no’s [or] nothing he didn’t want to talk about,” Falchuk recalled. “It was really important to him that his daughters would watch this at some point and get a sense of who he was as a man, entirely, not just as their dad. He wanted it to be true, he wanted it to be intimate [and] he wanted the real Eric to really be seen.”
He continued, “He’s an actor and, oftentimes, he’s either acting or he’s giving interviews that are in service or something else, whether it could be advocacy or a project or anything. This was just him being able to really be himself.”
According to Falchuk, both he and Dane wanted the late actor’s authenticity to “shine through” in what became his last interview.
Eric Dane in ‘Famous Last Words.’ Courtesy of Netflix
“I think he was so bold about it and so fearless about it that it really does, in my opinion,” the former Glee producer told the outlet. “What stayed with me more than anything was just his spirit and his courage and his acceptance of his frailty and his defiance against being pitied and his defiance against the disease even though he’s accepting it as it was happening.”
Falchuk was particularly moved by Dane’s “undefeatability and his humor.”
In his final interview, Eric Dane made a rare comment about how he dealt with his dad’s death by suicide decades prior. “I put a lot of effort into [Euphoria],” Dane, 53, said during an appearance on Netflix’s Famous Last Words, which premiered on Friday, February 20. “Well, [my character] Cal and I are very […]
“And just the way that he was approaching all of it,” he said on Friday. “I think it [came out] during the interview [and] it was just undeniable how he wasn’t faking it. He really was grateful for his life and for everything that was happening to him — even as he hated it and even as he was angry about it.”
At the end of the Famous Last Words conversation, Dane also expressed his gratitude for Falchuk.
“Thank you for allowing me to have this conversation with you,” Dane concluded the sit-down. “I mean, I think this is probably the most revealing and in-depth conversation I’ve had with just about anybody. You asked the right questions.”
