Eric Dane's posthumously released memoir, 'My Book of Days: A Memoir in Moments,' includes a candid account of a physical altercation with Josh Duhamel during the filming of the NBC series 'Las Vegas,' according to Entertainment Weekly. Duhamel headlined the drama opposite James Caan for five seasons, from 2003 to 2008.
Dane appeared as a guest star in the show's second season, and he writes that he arrived on set while suffering from a herniated disc in his neck. Because of the injury, he asked Duhamel to take care during a planned fight scene between their characters.
'We're about to film a fight scene. I ask the lead, Josh Duhamel, to please not grab me by the tie during the scene. He promises me he won't,' Dane writes. 'The director calls Action, and Josh pulls on my tie. Fire rips through my neck. I go, Whoa, whoa, whoa, we have to stop. He apologizes, I grunt from the pain, and then, take two. He pulls on my tie again.'
After the second take, Dane says he turned to a producer and warned, 'You better rein in your boy.' Duhamel apologized for failing to listen and said he had 'got caught up in the moment.'
The truce did not hold. 'Fine. Okay. Take three, and son of a bitch, he grabs my fucking tie again,' Dane continues. 'I whip off my suit coat and I say, Let's go, you pussy ass actor. I ball my hands into fists and I come at him. Nobody calls Cut, the camera keeps rolling, and to the world who sees the whole nasty scene, I'm the aggressor, the hothead, I start the fight.'
Dane makes clear in the book that the episode was not a moment he looks back on with pride. 'Josh and I have seen each other since and we're cool,' he writes. 'But I want to say it again. Josh, I was wrong. I should've walked away. I'm sorry, dude.'
Dane appeared in two episodes of 'Las Vegas' in 2004, two years before landing his breakthrough role as Dr. Mark Sloan in the second season of ABC's 'Grey's Anatomy.' Before 'Las Vegas,' he had worked steadily in television with guest spots on series including 'Roseanne' and 'Married.. with Children,' along with recurring roles on 'Charmed' and 'Gideon's Crossing.'
Duhamel, for his part, spoke earlier this year on 'In Depth with Graham Bensinger' about being difficult to work with at times, saying he would go to 'pretty extreme places in my head' to tap into his characters. He cited his 'Las Vegas' role as Danny McCoy, a former U.S. Marine coping with PTSD while apprenticing under a casino magnate, as one example.
'When I got on set, people would be like, Whoa, what the fuck is wrong with this dude?' Duhamel said, explaining that during the show's second season his character returned from deployment in Iraq in a dark place. 'That was the only way I knew how to do it, was to get into this place and stay there. [I] didn't talk to anybody.. And people would, sort of, avoid me and it scared people a little bit, including me.'
'My Book of Days: A Memoir in Moments' is now available for purchase.
