- Eric Dane wrote about an argument with Josh Duhamel in his posthumous memoir, My book of days.
- The late actor called Duhamel an “asshole actor” and claimed he refused to listen to his requests to relax during a fight scene.
- Dane died in February amid a battle with ALS. He was 53 years old.
In his posthumous memoir, Eric Dane recalled a heated moment with actor Josh Duhamel on the set of Las Vegas.
Dane, who died in February aged 53 amid a battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), wrote about the dispute reported in My book of days: a memoir in a few momentswhich was released on Tuesday, November 3.
Dane described filming an intense scene with Duhamel in 2004 for an appearance as Leo Broder in Season 2 of Las Vegaswhich ran for five years on NBC. The show centered around a team of people working at the fictional Montecito hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
Dane was trying to “fix” a herniated cervical disc in his neck and let Duhamel know to keep things light for their characters’ on-screen brawl.
“I’m on set, shooting a guest photo for the show Las Vegas. We are about to film a fight scene. I ask the lead, Josh Duhamel, not to grab me by the tie during the scene. He promises me he won’t. The director calls “Action” and Josh puts on my tie. The fire tears my neck. I say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, we have to stop.” He apologizes, I grunt in pain, then take two. He tugs on my tie again.
Dane said he turned to the producer and said, “You better get your boy under control.” Duhamel apologized before admitting that he “got caught up in the moment.”
“Good. Okay. Take three,” Dane continued, “and son of a bitch, he grabs my fucking tie again. I take off my suit coat and say, ‘Let’s go, you stupid actor.’ I clench my fists and come towards him. Nobody calls ‘Cut’, the camera keeps rolling, and for the world to see this whole nasty scene, I’m the aggressor, the hothead, I start the fight.
THE Grey’s Anatomy one old-timer insisted that “it was then” and, over the years, things between the actors naturally calmed down.
“Josh and I have since seen each other and we’re cool. But I want to say it again. Josh, I was wrong. I should have walked away. I’m sorry, man,” Dane wrote.
Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post/Getty
In a recent interview, Duhamel, also 53, admitted that he would delve into “these crazy, dark places” and go to “some pretty extreme places in my head” in order to tap into a character’s journey.
“When I came on set, people were like, ‘Whoa, what’s wrong with this guy?'” he said on In depth with Graham Bensinger in September. “I was on the show Las Vegasand in the second season, my character had been deployed to Iraq and he came back and he saw some shit. And he was in a really dark place. And we had a few new guys on the crew — and I became good friends with those guys — but they were like, ‘Man, those first few days of filming with you were like, oh my god, we have to do a whole season with this guy?’
Duhamel played Danny McCoy in Las Vegasformer U.S. Marine, close friend and apprentice of casino president Ed Deline (James Caan). In the aforementioned scene with Dane, Duhamel was most likely in this PTSD mental state.
“It was the only way I knew how to do it, was to get in that place and stay there,” Duhamel said of his methodical approach. “(I) wasn’t talking to anyone. I was just, sort of, in it. And people didn’t want to be around me. And people were, sort of, avoiding me, and that was kind of scaring people, including me.”
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Duhamel admitted that his approach was “probably not the healthiest way to get into that headspace.”
“It would take me a while to get out of where I had been working,” he said.
Weekly Entertainment contacted Josh Duhamel’s rep for comment on Dane’s book.
That of Eric Dane My book of days is out now.
Gn entert
