Dax Shepard slammed for exposing late Eric Dane's private AA struggles after death

Dax Shepard is catching heat for sharing an intimate story about the late Eric Dane nearly two months after his death.

During a recent appearance on the "All There Is with Anderson Cooper" podcast, Shepard detailed his past with Dane, admitting that he once "hated" him after crossing paths at an AA meeting.

"Eric Dane, I can now say I met in recovery, and we hated each other. I hated him!" Shepard told Cooper. "I thought he was a bit of a bully. And we were in a meeting … he threatened a younger member of the group, and this had been simmering for a long time, and I said, ‘Let’s go. Outside. Right now.’ It was on. And we walked outside to fist fight in the driveway of an AA meeting."

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Shepard said the two kept returning to the same meeting and eventually began to understand one another.

"God bless both of us," Shepard said. "We kept coming back to the same meeting, like neither was going to not show up. Over the course of the next two years, I found myself starting to kind of relate to him … I heard his story."

"His father shot himself in his house when he was a little boy," Shepard continued. "And his mom came upstairs and said, ‘I’ll tell you what happened if you promise that you won’t cry.’ So that little boy held onto that. And then that little boy grew up without a dad, like I grew up without a dad, and he was so in search of masculine validation, and it took all these shapes that I hated. That I’m sure he hated in me."

He said that during one meeting, it was Dane's turn to share, and while his group had a rule that members weren't allowed to reference other members' stories or give them advice, he broke it to say, "I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but that’s one of my favorite shares I’ve ever heard."

Shepard continued, "Maybe a week or two later, one of his shares, he said, ‘I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I think I’ve come to fall in love with Dax.’ … And then we became friends."

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Shepard said he related to the late actor in more ways than one.

"I came to fall in love with a very scared man trying and hoping he had become a man, and I related," Shepard said. "I ended up loving him so much."

The story didn't hit well with some fans online, who quickly called out Shepard for sharing such personal details.

"Is this a helpful story to share, Dax? What purpose does it serve to share this story now?," one person wrote on X.

"Telling these stories once the person is dead is so disgusting to me," another wrote. "I don’t care if he’s saying he understood him afterwards. Keep it to yourself."

"All he ever does is make everything about himself lol," one user quipped. "Biggest narcissist I’ve ever seen. Used to like his podcast until it just became too much."

Others defended Shepard, with one person noting, "People are going to overreact to this not knowing he spoke about this with eric on his podcast before eric was even diagnosed."

A representative for Shepard did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

Dane had been open about his struggles with addiction to drugs and alcohol in the years before his death.

"If you take the whole eight years I was on 'Grey's Anatomy,' I was f---ed up longer than I was sober and that was when things started going sideways for me," he admitted to Shepard during an appearance on the "Armchair Expert" podcast in 2024. 

Before his departure from the show in 2012, Dane went to rehab for an addiction to painkillers. 

"I didn't leave ['Grey's Anatomy'] so much as I think I was let go," he told Shepard. "I was struggling. They didn't let me go because of that, although it definitely didn't help."

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During his run as Capt. Tom Chandler on the TNT series "The Last Ship" from its premiere in June 2014 through its final season in 2018, Dane took another break from production for personal reasons: he was battling depression. 

"That was a scary thing, when you wake up, and you’re like: ‘I don’t want to get out of bed,’" he said during an appearance on the "Today" show in 2017.  "I was seeing these doctors thinking that there was something physically wrong with me, because I’d never felt like that."

"I mean, I’d dealt with depression throughout my life, but it was always manageable," he said. "I just felt like, you know, everybody kind of feels a little blue. But this just hit me like a truck. I had to take some time off — I went away, I took care of it, and I’m feeling great."

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Dane died in February after a battle with ALS. He was 53.

"With heavy hearts, we share that Eric Dane passed on Thursday afternoon following a courageous battle with ALS," Dane's family said in a statement to Fox News Digital at the time.

"He spent his final days surrounded by dear friends, his devoted wife, and his two beautiful daughters, Billie and Georgia, who were the center of his world. Throughout his journey with ALS, Eric became a passionate advocate for awareness and research, determined to make a difference for others facing the same fight. He will be deeply missed, and lovingly remembered always. Eric adored his fans and is forever grateful for the outpouring of love and support he’s received. The family has asked for privacy as they navigate this impossible time."

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Dane left his daughters with heartbreaking advice in a pre-taped interview for Netflix's "Famous Last Words" series.

"Billie and Georgia, these words are for you," Dane said to his daughters in the November 2025 interview that was released the day after his death.

"I tried. I stumbled sometimes, but I tried. Overall, we had a blast, didn’t we?" he said before getting choked up while recounting all the moments they shared together. "I see you now playing in the ocean for hours, my water babies. Those days, pun intended, were heaven."