Eric Dane Breaks Silence on Being 'Fired' From Grey's Anatomy—'Struggling'

Eric Dane has broken his silence on being "fired" from Grey's Anatomy and opened up about past struggles with addiction.

The actor played Mark Sloan in the long-running medical drama—which premiered in 2005—first appearing in Season 2 before becoming a series regular in Season 3. With the show having run for years, it's no surprise that characters have come and gone, with Dane's departure being announced in 2012.

In the final two episodes of Season 8, Mark and Lexie Grey (played by Chyler Leigh), as well as a variety of other characters, flew to help with surgery at a hospital in Boise. The plane crashed and before Lexie passed away, Mark was able to confess his feelings for her. Even though everyone else survived, during the premiere episode of Season 9 it was revealed that Mark was on life support after suffering serious injuries. The character died after the machines were turned off, following the demands of his will.

Now Dane has explained why he departed the show during an episode of the Armchair Expert podcast, saying it was mainly because he had become more expensive as an actor.

Newsweek emailed a spokesperson for Dane and Grey's Anatomy production company Shondaland for comment Tuesday.

"I didn't leave so much as I think I was let go...I was struggling, they didn't let me go because of that although it definitely didn't help," he told hosts Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, referring to his addiction to drugs and alcohol.

"I was starting to become, as most of these actors who have spent significant time on the show, you start to become very expensive for the network. And the network knows that the show is going to do what it's going to do irrespective of who they keep on it as long as they have their Gray they were fine," he explained.

"I wasn't the same guy they had hired, so I had understood when I was let go and Shonda [Rhimes] was really great. She protected us fiercely. She protected us publicly, she protected us privately...I love Shonda Rhimes and she protected me but I was probably fired. It wasn't ceremoniously like 'You're fired' it was just like 'You're not coming back.'"

Dane explained that his time on the show was "wild" but by the time he was cast, he had been sober for "three or four years already."

He continued: "I had my wits about me but I sort of knew what reality was and what reality wasn't and I was able to differentiate between the two. I was able to sort of conceptualize what that was, keep it in its place, enjoy it, dip in every now and again and come back.

"I think the net-net is I didn't really handle it very well. If you take the whole eight years I was on Grey's Anatomy, I was f***** up longer than I was sober and that was when things started going sideways for me."

When Shepard asked Dane if he relapsed in the middle of his stint on the hit program, he replied: "Oh yeah. I think it may have been. It was overwhelming and I just wanted to pretend it wasn't."

Dane told the hosts that he got sober for the first time when he was 26 after he spent 28 days in a treatment center in Pasadena. The actor was able to stay sober for years but at the height of his fame during Grey's Anatomy, Dane checked himself into rehab for an addiction to painkillers, which he was prescribed to deal with a sports injury.

He said his relapse took place after the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike, which saw Season 7 of Grey's Anatomy only have 17 episodes, instead of 23 as originally planned.

"I had a lot of time on my hands in the off-season," Dane explained.

Rhimes previously shared her reasoning for killing off Mark, writing in a now-deleted blog post: "I had to do what was right for the integrity of the character... So Mark dies. And he and Lexie get to be together in a way. Their love remains true."