Like many TV watchers, I first took notice of Eric Dane on “Grey’s Anatomy.” His Dr. Mark Sloan — “McSteamy,” in the show’s parlance — was a gleeful agent of chaos, remixing the show’s existing couplings, thanks in large part to Dane’s smoldering charisma, wielded to great effect.
Dane, who died on Feb. 19 after a much-publicised diagnosis of ALS, was a magnetic figure. But in the years after his time on “Grey’s” ended (he left the show in 2012), Dane also became a more interesting actor, thanks in large part to one dynamite role. The kids of “Euphoria” get all the attention, but it was Dane’s pained performance as a man fighting against his every impulse that lent that show’s first two seasons genuine ballast. Without Dane’s performance as Cal Jacobs, a closeted dad whose desires have become an all-consuming enemy, neither Jacob Elordi (playing Cal’s son) nor Hunter Schafer (playing a high-school girl caught up in an unhealthy relationship with Cal) would have nearly as much to play.
But his performance on “Euphoria” is brilliant on its own terms. As Cal, Dane could barely express what he truly wanted: What came so easily to the sexually fluent McSteamy at the anything-goes Seattle Grace Hospital was suddenly bound up and hidden when he had to play chaperone to the teens at Euphoria High. That we who’d seen “Grey’s” knew how readily Dane could play friendly and funny and sexy only made the triumph of Dane’s frigidity on “Euphoria” more apparent. Here, he was a man so uncomfortable in his own skin that he demanded to elicit that discomfort in others. His son, as well as Jules, a trans teen who’d been intrigued by his admittedly inappropriate entreaties, recoiled at his touch. And why wouldn’t they? Cal — taciturn, and yet quick to startling waves of anger — seemed like the kind of man who’d blanch at his own reflection.
Back in Season 2, before Dane’s health took a turn, I recall thinking to myself that the mere fact of this performer taking this role was quite daring. Yes, actors need to work, and this was a job with HBO, but there’d been no guarantee that “Euphoria” would perform quite like it did (coming to dominate culture every Sunday night during its run), and, well — he’d been McSteamy! Wouldn’t other roles like that, leading-man parts with a twist, appeal more? Instead, Dane leaned into a part that got its own standout episode, one in which we saw a flashback to Cal’s past exploring his sexuality with men before seeing present-tense Cal, drunk and despondent, excoriate his family before literally pissing on the floor as he walks out on them.
“Euphoria” gets a lot of heat for being over-the-top, but, within its loopy creative universe, the performances must be carefully calibrated so as to keep the whole thing from crashing down. And Dane did just that; he returns for the upcoming Season 3, and I have every belief his performance will be a highlight.
I’d assumed it was the Shonda Rhimes training that kept his “Euphoria” performance coherent, but, when I interviewed Dane last year, he told me there was something else at work, too: a new willingness to be freewheeling and to take risks. “I’ve always had a profound respect for the craft of acting, but I never considered myself an artist,” he said. “I could never admit it, until I started making ‘Euphoria.’ That’s when I gave myself the allowance to feel like I was an artist.”
And it was art he made: Dane brought to life someone pushing so hard against walls that cannot come down in his understanding of his sexuality that the effort had to break something. In this same interview, I had felt obliged to ask Dane (delicately, to the point of awkwardness) about his living with ALS. The diagnosis had been announced months prior, and Dane was now promoting the Amazon series “Countdown,” on which he played a supporting role, but the news hung in the air. “I really don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “I made the announcement. That’s what’s going on with me; it’s very personal to me.”
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Fair enough. But, attempting to move on from a head-on discussion of the private matter of health, I wondered: What work did Dane envision doing going forward? “I am ready and willing to do just about anything, but I have limitations that I understand will preclude me from playing certain roles,” he said. “I’m working on ‘Euphoria.’ I finished ‘Countdown.’ As far as that goes, I’m pretty capable.”
The clock is cruel; an actor who will live forever in youth as a hunky surgeon is gone before his time. But the passage of time is the whole point of his final major performance, too. Cal Jacobs let his life slip away from him piece by piece until he realized, all at once, that it was gone. The cordial, insightful Eric Dane who, even when sick, raved in our interview about his younger colleagues and told me that he’d come to realize that how one conducts oneself on a set — and off it — is the measure of a performer? I met him only briefly, but I don’t think he made the same mistake.
From Variety US