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Almost everyone misses him dearly.
In the wake of Eric Dane’s tragic passing, countless former colleagues have paid tribute to the late actor.
One former background actress from Grey’s Anatomy, however, remembers a very different man.
Accusing him of playing a role in the downfall of her career, she’s calling Dane “a bully and an a-hole.”
Not everyone feels the same about the late actor
Laura Ann Tull wrote on Threads, the Meta-owned attempt to replace Twitter after the latter’s fall, in response to reports on Dane’s passing.
Responding to Variety, Tull condemned the late actor as a man who “was a bully and an a-hole.”
This is not a popular sentiment in any sense.
Her dislike of the late actor stems from when the two both appeared on Grey’s Anatomy.
He was prominently introduced as McSteamy, where Tull was a background actress — an extra. She worked on the show, she says, for about three years.
“He was a coward who abused me,” Tull announced in a series of posts. “Bullied me. Made fun of me.”
Naturally, she received a not-insignificant amount of pushback from other denizens of Threads.
“He just died,” Tull acknowledged. “I only wish he’d apologized & admitted what he did.”
What did he do?
According to Tull, Dane interfered with her ability to work, possibly getting her let go from Grey’s Anatomy. This, she says, upended her career.
Did she get him ‘fired’ from his most famous job?
Tull acknowledged that Dane had passed away — but was unwilling to walk back her words or sentiments.
“His dying doesn’t change [the] destruction he caused me,” she wrote in one post.
Tull revealed that she had, at one time, intended to pursue legal action against him.
She also alleged that she is the reason “why he was fired from Grey’s.”
If there is any evidence of this, she did not provide it. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, Dane’s 2012 departure was due to a combination of budgetary and creative choices.
To be entirely honest, parts of Tull’s thread of posts are a little difficult to follow.
It sounds like she believes that Dane spoke ill of her behind her back, doing lasting harm to her reputation on set and then to her career.
Tull has been talking about this for years.
She apparently received the label “weird” on set and blamed Dane for it.
However, she has admitted that she and Dane never spoke directly to each other.
How could one person remember the man so differently than everyone else?
It is possible that Tull’s impressions of Dane are factual. If so, it is possible that she is not the only person who had an issue with the actor, but that others have kept quiet.
(Dane, incidentally, has acknowledged that he struggled with prescription medication around that time.)
We can also consider that Tull — who by her own admission never spoke to the man — may have perceived him as an enemy, and (perhaps through misinformation told to her by third parties) allowed this belief to fester over time, but in error.
Unfortunately, we can neither prove nor disprove Tull’s account. It seems unlike that anyone from the series is going to back her up — but we would be interested if one of his former co-stars chooses to suprise us.
Some people die and are unfairly lionized by people who either did not know them, have bad intention, or both. But it is also possible for a kind person to die and be condemned.
It seems unlikely that Tull or Dane’s loved ones are going to be able to reconcile their views of Dane. Probably best if they do not try.