Eric Dane played Mark Sloan until season nine of Grey’s Anatomy and, years later, he talks about why he distanced himself from the medical drama.
Eric Dane he played one of the most charismatic characters of Grey’s Anatomyil Dottor Mark Sloan. The character, however, did not survive the ninth season, following the tragic plane crash in the eighth in which his better half also lost his life Lexie. A heartbreaking loss in the eyes of the public, particularly fond of the couple, as well as the individual characters. Years after his exit from the scene, Eric Dane told more details from behind the scenes and explained that his departure from TV series it is perhaps also due to the problems he was facing at that time.
Grey’s Anatomy, Eric Dane Reveals Why Mark Sloan Exited: “They Let Me Go”
Dr. Bollore, stage name of Mark Sloan, made his entrance into the hospital towards the end of the second season with a guest-starring role. But he was so well received that the medical drama decided to give him another long-term opportunity, turning him into one of the main characters of the TV series created by Shonda Rhimes. The eighth season, however, undermined his permanence and, in the ninth season, he said goodbye to the medical drama audience with an unexpected death. Years later, Eric Dane he said that the decision to abandon the successful TV series was not his. In an interview during the podcast Armchair Expert Of Dax Shepardas reported EW, The actor revealed that it was the production that fired him, explaining that at the time he was struggling with his addiction issues:
I didn’t leave, I think they let me go. I’m not saying that’s why they let me go, but it certainly didn’t help. I was starting to become, as most actors who have been on a show for many years are, very expensive for the network. And the network knows that the show is going to do what it needs to do regardless of who’s on it. As long as they have their Grey’s, it’s going to be fine. I wasn’t the same person they hired and I knew that when they fired me. Shonda Rhimes has been really great. She’s protected us fiercely, she’s protected us publicly and privately. But I probably got fired. It wasn’t set up as, ‘You’re fired,’ it was set up as, ‘You’re not coming back.’
The ninth season started again with a tragic farewell: that of Mark Sloan, fresh from a brutal plane crash whose victim was Lexie himself. And while Arizona lost a leg, Sloan did not survive his injuries. Eric Dane briefly reappeared in the seventeenth season of the long-running medical drama, taking advantage of Meredith’s comatose state dealing with the consequences of Covid-19. Today Eric Dane continues to play prominent roles on the big screen, such as the one in Euphoriabut the fame generated by Grey’s Anatomy it was the great launching pad of his career. At the time, however, the actor was struggling with painkiller addiction problems, as he himself said:
If you look at the entire eight years of Grey’s Anatomy, I was fucked up longer than I was sober. And that’s when things started to go wrong for me.
