Eric Dane blamed himself for split with wife Rebecca Gayheart

Eric Dane blamed himself for his split from wife Rebecca Gayheart, he said in a new special filmed before his death.

“I think Rebecca was more willing to show up and do her part than I was,” he told Brad Falchuk for Netflix’s “Famous Last Words: Eric Dane.”

The special was released Friday, one day after Dane died at age 53 following a difficult battle with ALS.

“I don’t have that gene that just makes you wanna keep going regardless of what happens,” the “Grey’s Anatomy alum continued. “I’m like, ‘If there’s a hole in the boat, don’t try to patch the hole.’ Scuttle the damn thing and find a new one.”

Dane and Gayheart, 54, split in 2018 after 13 years of marriage, but they called off their divorce in March 2025, one month before Dane went public with his ALS diagnosis.

The couple shared daughters Billie, 15, and Georgia, 14.

Dane praised his estranged wife in the special, calling her “a fighter” who always “preserves.”

He also admitted that there was “a lot of time lost” with Gayheart and their kids after the former couple’s separation.

“We’re still really best friends, but we’re not together,” he explained. “By virtue of the distance of us living in separate homes, there’s a lot of time lost there. But I made sure that I can be there as much as possible and certainly when it counts.”

“We still love each other deeply,” Dane went on, “I just think we don’t wanna live with each other. But there’s a lot of love there.”

The “Euphoria” star also declared, “I will have never, by the time anyone sees this, have fallen in love with another woman as deeply as I fell in love with Rebecca.”

Elsewhere in the special, Dane looked back on the “organic and fortuitous” start to his and Gayheart’s relationship.

“I met Rebecca, I turned to her friend and I said, ‘I’m going to marry that girl,’” he recalled.

When asked how he knew Gayheart was “the one,” Dane replied, “I have no idea. I had no idea how serious I was in that moment, but I said that.”

“I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her,” he added.

Dane also described how, in his opinion, Gayheart felt about him.

“She would say that I was probably a person who was constantly vulnerable and terrified of being vulnerable,” he stated. “I think she would say that I was funny. She would say that I was charming and I don’t know it.”

Before Dane’s death, Gayheart explained that she called off their divorce to teach her daughters to “show up for family” even “when times are at their worst.”

“We tell them, ‘We show up for people no matter what. He is our family. He is your father,’” she shared on the “Broad Ideas” podcast last November.

Gayheart also admitted in the interview that she wasn’t sure if she was handling the situation “the wrong way or right way” by withdrawing the filing.

“I’m just showing up and trying to be there for [my kids]. I guess time will tell,” she said.

Gayheart and Dane both had romantic relationships with other people after their split.

She’s been linked to billionaire Peter Morton and he briefly dated filmmaker Janell Shirtcliff last June.