In only its second season, Euphoria became a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Each episode averaged around 16.3 million viewers, making it the second most-watched show in HBO history behind Game of Thrones, and the season attracted over 30 million tweets, leading Twitter to crown it “the most-tweeted-about TV show of the decade so far in the U.S.”
When I mention those statistics to Eric Dane, he grins widely. “It’s crazy,” he says in his potent baritone. “I’m the luckiest guy on TV.”
Sam Levinson’s series follows a group of interconnected teens at the fictional East Highland High School—led by Rue (Zendaya), a recovering drug addict—as they navigate first love, trauma, addiction, familial strife, and heartbreak. Dane plays Cal, a closeted father whose fetish for filming his sexual encounters with young gay men and transgender women, including the statutory rape of a 17-year-old Jules (Hunter Schafer), has done a number on his son, Nate (Jacob Elordi).
“I get a lot of, ‘I feel weird saying this, but I love you on Euphoria,’” says Dane, adding, “Apparently I’m a ‘Zaddy.’ That’s what I get called sometimes—or so I’ve heard. I still don’t really know what it means.” He pauses. “By the way, I’m so not like that. I’m a neurotic Jew underneath it all.”
The second season of Euphoria saw Cal receive arguably the richest arc of any character on the crowded series. We saw him engage in a pair of tense standoffs with Nate and Fezco; witnessed his brutal humiliation at the hands of Ashtray; delved into his tortured backstory, wherein he abandoned his high-school love (a hunk named Derek) when Marsha got pregnant with Nate; and observed him baring his soul (and penis) to his family, finally admitting his secret (well, one of them at least). It is, without question, the most powerful performance of Dane’s career.
For years, the 49-year-old actor felt boxed-in playing roles like Dr. Mark Sloan, aka “McSteamy,” on Grey’s Anatomy, or Capt. Tom Chandler, the leader of a Navy vessel navigating a deadly pandemic in The Last Ship. Now, he feels liberated.
“It’s counterintuitive to play the same character over and over and over again, and that’s what I felt like I was doing,” he says. “I felt I had more to offer than that, and Euphoria has been inspiring, and challenging, and at times difficult—and worth it.”
I’m seated in a booth with Dane at a tony restaurant inside the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. He just wrapped National Anthem, an upcoming film he shot in Albuquerque that also features Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney, the pop star Halsey, Simon Rex, and Paul Walter Hauser. But more than anything, he feels reinvigorated by his stint on Euphoria, which may earn him his first Emmy nomination.
How did you land the role of Cal on Euphoria? Because when the series first dropped, you were really the acting veteran among the group.
Well, Z has been working a long time, too. We need some adulting around. [Laughs] No, all of these guys are so precocious. I don’t refer to them as “kids,” I refer to them as “young adults,” because most of them really have their shit together. I haven’t seen any tomfoolery. No shenanigans. But I took a year off of everything after The Last Ship because I felt like what I was doing wasn’t making me happy and I needed to rethink a lot of things. I met with my representatives after about a year and I said, “Ultimately, I’m the one who makes the decisions here, but I think we’re doing this all wrong. My internal experience is very different from my external experience and I want to work on projects that challenge me.” My agent, Josh Lieberman, who also represents Zendaya, told me about this great pilot for this HBO show called Euphoria. I met Sam [Levinson] and we spoke about it for 45 minutes, and after I left, as the story goes, he called HBO and said, “I found Cal.”
Cal (Eric Dane) in Season 3 of Euphoria
HBOI understand that you all work very long hours on Euphoria.
We do. We spent the entire day shooting that scene where I urinate on the foyer. It was heavy, and everybody was really prepared and very present. I loved working with Jacob [Elordi], Paula [Marshall], and Zak [Steiner]. Those guys were a great safety net for me.
How long of a day was it? And was that… a prosthetic?
About a 12-hour day for four or five [script] pages. And yes, it was. [Laughs]
It looked very similar to the prosthetic penis that Evan Handler used on And Just Like That… so I’m curious if it was the same one, both being HBO and all.
[Laughs] Oh no, this was made for me. I think we had it made at the same spot. They just brought it out, I said, “This is a good penis, let’s use that one,” and that was it. It was weird working that rig to make it pee. There was a crimp on a tube that I had to uncrimp. I had to fake it like I was scratching my back while I was peeing so I can uncrimp this line and the pee could come out, and then I had to go back again and turn it off.
That does sound arduous. You and Jacob Elordi do have special chemistry on the show. It’s incredibly intense.
That’s kind of the way we are off-set too. The dialogue’s different but we’re pretty tight, so the on-screen dynamic is very evident when we work together. But we keep it pretty light in-between takes. I’ve never had an experience on set playing this character where I’ve come home and felt awful about it. You turn it on and turn it off.
There have been reports that certain actors didn’t get along with Sam [Levinson] during the making of Season 2, and therefore you did not see them feature as prominently, like Barbie Ferreira. Were you privy to any of that?
No, just by virtue of who I work with. It’s me and Jacob, and maybe a look with me and Z. But I’m not in high school, so I don’t deal with any of that. I’m an island that Nate visits every now and again.
Was it fun to shoot that scene where you stare down Angus Cloud’s Fezco in the convenience store?
[Laughs] Angus is my guy, man! I love Angus. We’re just playing cowboys. That was a great scene. Sam really created so much tension with all the shots and cuts.
Did you see the recent clip of Angus on the red carpet outside the Vanity Fair party that went viral—where he looks stoned and like he couldn’t give less of a shit about the ET reporter’s questions?
No! I love Angus. This guy is so crazy. We were doing a press junket and he just pulls out a cheeseburger and starts eating it in the frame. Can we Google the clip?
We watch the clip together and Dane is absolutely losing it. When we get to the part where Cloud tells the reporter, “No thank you,” he collapses into the booth in hysterics.
That was one of the greatest interviews I’ve ever seen in my life! Was that live on ET? Oh my god, that’s so brilliant. He’s such a sweet, sweet soul.
I loved it. Another intense sequence in Season 2 was the one where Javon Walton’s Ashtray is repeatedly bashing you in the head with a shotgun. What was that like to film?
It was a little painful! After you get hit 50 times with a prop shotgun, you start to feel it a little bit. It was foam, so I’m sure if you slowed down a couple of those frames you could see the butt of the shotgun bend. That kid’s a professional athlete—Javon’s probably gonna be a pro boxer—so he knows how to pull a punch, and he was really good with that shotgun. You know, my scenes are so dark on the show but it’s a lot of fun, because you don’t have to deal with the real-world consequences.
RIP Ashtray. Did he indeed die?
RIP. I think he’s dead!
Will Cal be returning for Season 3? Because when we last left him he was in pretty dire straits, getting arrested by the cops.
Oh, Cal isn’t going anywhere. You need an adult in the room. We don’t want the inmates to run the asylum.
Although he might be the head inmate at the asylum.
The warden! But as far as the story goes, I’m guessing [Nate] doesn’t give the thumb drive over—or maybe I go to jail and I’m talking through glass for the next six episodes. I don’t know!
What’s your biggest hurdle in trying to humanize a monster like Cal?
That was the challenge—can I make this guy human? I think sincerity is the hardest thing to wrangle with him, because some of the circumstances are so out-of-this-world dark, interesting, and enigmatic.
I wanted to go back to The Last Ship for a sec. You’re a liberal guy who’s been outspoken when it comes to progressive causes, so I’m curious if you and your co-star Adam Baldwin ever butted heads on The Last Ship, since he’s this right-wing Twitter troll.
I just don’t follow him on Twitter. Listen, Adam is a sweet man who needs to muzzle his Twitter feed at times. I never had nothing but love for the guy. The first three seasons were amazing—the first two and a half.
But then it wasn’t’?
Well, I think after that it became more of a gunfight and a cool line. It morphed into a gunfight and the curse of cool, and it was hard for me to engage when that dynamic entered the workspace, I guess.
Do you feel like playing Cal on Euphoria has allowed you to stretch as an actor in ways you haven’t been able to previously?
It’s nice to be able to show that, because I’ve always felt like I could do more than play the noble, stoic guy. Creatively, if I’m not challenging myself or constantly creating an environment of vulnerability when I’m working, then I disengage. It’s hard for me to stay onboard, you know? And I’m not a masochist about it, I just have to challenge myself or I’m staring out a window.
Like you’re on autopilot.
That’s exactly how I felt. I felt like I was on autopilot for, like, 10 years. This has really revitalized my love for the craft of acting. For years, I would have never considered myself an artist. “Actor” was the title that was put on my tax returns, but I never felt like an actor.
Was part of that being on a show like Grey’s Anatomy for 140 episodes that’s this well-oiled machine where you’re one of many moving parts?
Yeah, I mean look: 140 episodes of any television show is a lot, and yeah… autopilot. For the actor, that’s the kiss of death.
I remember on Grey’s people making such a big deal out of you coming out of the shower with a towel on, and then of course your character had the nickname “McSteamy.” Was it odd to be objectified that way?
Yeah, because I never felt like that. It didn’t suck, but I never felt like I fully inhabited that character. I’m so not that guy. Mark Sloan? I’m not him.
So, it felt like an ill-fitting suit you wore?
I like that. Yeah. A suit but the sleeves are too short and you’re constantly tugging at the sleeves trying to fix them.
Your high-school love during the flashback sequence in Euphoria is named “Derek,” like your rival on Grey’s Anatomy. Was that Sam Levinson having a little fun?
I don’t think Sam thought twice about it, and I don’t think he’s even aware to this day that my co-star on Grey’s Anatomy was named Derek.
What did you think of the way Euphoria handled Cal’s backstory?
Wasn’t it a great episode? I thought that episode was one of the best episodes this season. I thought, yup, sounds about right—but it was beautifully written. It was like a mini movie. I think you can create a character and be somebody else and lead a double life effectively for a certain time period, and then I think your body starts to reject that character because it just isn’t who you are on a cellular level. And I think Cal held it together for about as long as anybody could hold it together.
Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and Mark Sloan (Eric Dane) on Grey's Anatomy
Scott Garfield/Disney via GettyI’m curious if playing Cal has made you think about your own childhood. I read that you lost your father at a young age.
My father died when I was 7. He was an alcoholic and took his own life. He fought in the Vietnam War, and that probably changed him a little bit. It is something to draw from, but with Cal, it’s more about living a double life. I know what that’s like. I’ve had drug-addiction problems, I’ve had mental-health problems. I know what it’s like to try and keep that shit away from people and try to hide behind it—to keep it locked up in a box so nobody sees it. I know what that’s like. And that’s all you need to know to play Cal.
I imagine that’s quite a difficult juggling act, because on TV you’re this sex symbol on a hit show and then in real life, as you say, you were going through some personal problems that you had to hide from the public.
You start to disappear after a while, you know? That’s the point where I didn’t recognize the person I saw in the mirror. And that is a weird feeling—and I don’t say that lightly. I really didn’t recognize the person that I saw. My reflection was alien to me.
What did you do when you came to that realization?
I got help. I went to work with some doctors in Arizona and did a lot of work surrounding my father; a lot of work surrounding my current set of circumstances; a lot of work surrounding my profession. It’s part of the reason I came to the realization that I needed to change things up dramatically or I was gonna blow away—and I don’t mean blow away from the business, I mean blow away from the planet.
I think you’re doing the best acting of your career right now. Do you think that work you put in also helped you become a better actor?
I’m much more open than I used to be. I’ve always been a really sensitive person, but I’ve never allowed that side of me to run the show. I’ve never led with it. I realized something when I was going through all that shit: Vulnerability is something you’re going to have to develop a taste for, and the goal in life, for me, is being able to exist in a suspended state of vulnerability, and embrace it, and get real comfortable with it, because that’s the only way through all this shit that I’ve welcomed into my life or has been placed in my life.
You were treated rather unfairly by the tabloids as well around the time of Grey’s Anatomy. Some photos came out of you and your partner in a threesome, and the tabloids were vicious, essentially painting you as this deviant couple. I don’t think it gets treated nearly the same way today.
Well, it was bullshit. You walk through that stuff and it’s not fun. It’s not fun. But you just move through it. I didn’t read any of it. I’m not so sure those writers are of... the highest caliber.
Do you think all these things you went through made you stronger?
They made me more comfortable in my skin. I don’t feel like I need to be anything other than myself at this point in my life, and however that’s received, so be it.
Cal (Eric Dane) in Season 3 of Euphoria
HBOI wanted to go back to you convening with your representatives after The Last Ship and deciding that you wanted to make some professional changes. You said you “never felt like an actor,” which sounds torturous.
I figured everything that I was doing as an actor was wrong. I loved working on Grey’s Anatomy and I loved those people. The Last Ship was cool for a while. But none of it really allowed me to stretch. None of it really demanded that I maintain some level of vulnerability. None of it challenged me in a way that allowed me to meet any moment, because I just didn’t feel like there were any. I know that sounds kind of harsh, but this is an entirely different ballgame.
It sounds like with Cal and Euphoria, you’ve reached a level of professional contentment.
There’s a stillness in the work that I had never had before. A pause. I love this job. I love this character. I know I’m not supposed to say that, but I love this character. It’s not for me to judge him—I can’t allow any judgment into it—but this is a really fun character for me to play.
