Dax Shepard Says He ‘Hated’ Eric Dane Before They Bonded During AA Meetings | Dax Shepard, Eric Dane | Celebrity News and Gossip | Entertainment, Photos and Videos

Dax Shepard says he once “hated” Eric Dane before they later became friends.

The 51-year-old host of Armchair Expert recently chatted with CNN’s Anderson Cooper at the New Orleans Book Festival and recalled how he and the late Grey’s Anatomy star almost got into a fight, but then bonded during AA meetings.

“Eric Dane, I can now say I met in recovery and we hated each other. I hated him!” Dax said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “I thought he was a bit of a bully. And we were in a meeting [and] 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 a fist fight in the driveway of an AA meeting.”

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Dax said people intervened thankfully, and they kept going back to the same meeting.

“Over the course of the next two years, I found myself starting to kind of relate to him. I heard his story,” he shared.

“His father shot himself in his house when he was a little boy. And his mom came upstairs and said, ‘I’ll tell you what happened if you promise that you won’t cry,’” the Parenthood actor continued. “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.”

“I remember he had his share one time and I said, ‘I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but that’s one of my favorite shares I’ve ever heard,’” Dax added. “Maybe a week or two later, one of his shares, he said, ‘I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but I think I’ve come to fall in love with Dax.’ And then we became friends.”

Dax said he would often visit Eric at his house and they connected over not having a dad around.

“I ended up loving him so much,” he concluded.

Dax finally responded to wife Kristen Bell‘s anniversary post that sparked backlash.