Eric Dane opened up further about how he’s feeling since his ALS diagnosis during a recent Giving Tuesday panel with I AM ALS and the creative voices behind Brilliant Minds.
“I’m not about to concede my purpose to some disease. I just am not capable of doing that,” he said during the panel. Later adding: “I have no reason to be in a good spirit at any time, on any given day. I don’t think anybody would blame me if I went upstairs in my bedroom, crawled under the sheets, and spent the next two weeks crying.
“I think it’s imperative that I share my journey with as many people as I can because I don’t feel like my life is about me anymore,” Dane added.
The 53-year-old recently guest starred on an episode of NBC’s Brilliant Minds, where he played a firefighter who’s been diagnosed with ALS; he will also appear in the upcoming season of Euphoria.
“We really wanted to honor him and his experience and be really truthful about it. [We] didn’t want to sensationalize in any way,” Michael Grassi, the NBC medical drama’s creator and showrunner, had explained to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the episode’s airing.
Dane said that realizing his life is about more than him has been something he’s had to “wrestle” with because he’s “a pretty selfish” person. “This is such a big deal to me to make sure that people are aware of what ALS is and what it’s about, and more importantly, what we can do to combat it and improve the landscape,” he added.
Dane disclosed earlier this year that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord and causes loss of muscle control. There’s currently no cure.
Grassi previously told THR that Dane’s team got in touch and said he had seen Brilliant Minds and would like to do it, which started a series of conversations between the showrunner and Dane. “We really wanted to honor Eric and step up and do this for him. Cast, crew [and] writers — everybody really stepped up in such a beautiful way,” he said.
