Watch: Rebecca Gayheart-Dane Details New Chapter as Family After Eric Dane Death
Six months after patriarch Eric Dane died following a battle with ALS, his family’s prognosis is strong.
As wife Rebecca Gayheart-Dane and their daughter Billie, 16, and Georgia, 14, navigate their grief over losing the beloved Grey’s Anatomy actor, “It’s really a season of growth for all of us,” she told E! News’ Erin Lim Rhodes in an exclusive interview. “Life is hard for us right now. But we are getting through, and we are soldiering on.”
In fact, Gayheart-Dane is marching towards an exciting new assignment as she works on the musical adaptation of her 1999 dark comedy Jawbreaker.
And for the 55-year-old, the project is so much more than a role.
“I took many years off to be a stay-at-home mom,” she explained, “so now it’s really important for me to do this musical and show my kids that this is, number one, what we do as women. We go back to work. We say yes to things that are scary. And also, we do that even when life is hard.”
Though Gayheart-Dane is admittedly “not a singer,” she was eager to sign on to the musical, noting, “I love doing things out of my comfort zone.”
While this chapter hasn’t been the easiest for any of them as they mourn the loss of Dane, who shared his diagnosis in April 2025, “I’m going to work, the girls are going to school,” Gayheart-Dane added. “We’re doing all the things.”
Thankfully, the Urban Legend star says she and Dane prepared her children well for the world.
Michael Tran/FilmMagic
“I think we’ve tried to instill just character and making good decisions, keeping themselves safe, setting boundaries,” Gayheart reflected. “I think they have a pretty good sense of a safe situation and a dangerous situation. And we’ve been doing this since they were little. So, they know.”
And while the circumstances of Jawbreaker the Musical are decidedly not danger-free—three high school girls accidentally kill their friend during a prank gone wrong involving you guessed it, a jawbreaker—Gayheart-Dane is thrilled to be sinking her teeth into the project. Especially since this time, she’ll be stepping into the shoes of Principal Sherwood.
“I am so excited because I really believe that this movie needs to be turned into a musical,” she said. “It’s so campy. It was made to be a musical.”
Plus, “People are going to be blown away by the music in this,” Gayheart-Dane revealed. “It is unexpected. It’s beautiful It tells the story in a fresh, new, relevant way without losing the timelessness of it.”
Jawbreaker The Musical hits the stage at Los Angeles’ Hollywood’s Hudson Backstage Theatre from Sept. 4th through the 20th.
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