The day we spoke to Patrick Dempsey about his new Amazon Prime thriller, he had woken up to the awful news that his Grey’s Anatomy co-star Eric Dane had died aged 53.
Less than a year ago, the late actor shared that he had been diagnosed with the terminal disease ALS. Friends of Dempsey’s visited Dane last week and said he was no longer able to move or swallow.
‘We were expecting it. I just didn’t realise it was going to happen so quickly,’ Dempsey told Metro.
The 60-year-old detailed how he had tried to book Dane onto his new show Memory of a Killer, in the role of his brother, who is suffering with advanced dementia just as Dempsey’s character receives a diagnosis for it.
‘His agent had reached out, and we were trying to make it work,’ said Dempsey. ‘But it’s just so shocking how rapidly the disease progressed.’
He went on to pay tribute to his former co-star from Sloan Memorial, as well as the family he is survived by: ‘He was a remarkable actor and a remarkable man to work with, and he is deeply missed. I wish his family the best and I’m glad he left such a remarkable legacy.
‘He gave everything he could to bring awareness to his disease at the very end. I know it was very physically difficult for him, but it was incredibly honourable that he did it.
‘He stayed strong and he fought as long as he could. Now he’s in a peaceful place.’
Dempsey turned 60 while playing hitman Angelo on the new six-part thriller and it’s clear the milestone and his character’s dementia diagnosis prompted thoughts of the actor’s own mortality.
‘I’m on the back side of the mountain,’ he said, referring to his age. ‘A lot of people that I know around me are going, so I don’t know how much time I have left. It hits home a lot more the older you get.
‘Just look at this week alone. A lot of people have passed,’ he said, referring to the late Robert Duvall as well.
‘You realise that life is very quick and that we better live every day like it’s our last, because we don’t know if we’ll have another one, and not worry about the past so much or the future,’ he said, noting it’s easier said than done.
Dempsey might be best known as Grey’s neurosurgeon Dr Shepherd (or to fans, McDreamy), as well as a series of rom-com heartthrobs (Enchanted, Bridget Jones’s Baby), but he took on this new show as part of an ongoing effort to distance himself from the soap medic scrubs.
‘I had done all that, so it was less to explore,’ he told us. ‘I think I went as far as I could in Grey’s Anatomy. I did 11 seasons. We weren’t going to go any deeper, so it was time to move on.’
Since then he’s shifted gears away from the medical world to the motorsport one, with a role in race-car drama Ferrari and a literal pedal to the metal seat in the World Endurance Championship, racing for Porsche (hence the Porsche that pitches up in his latest show).
Next came another pivot, to a focus on his family: ‘I had been gone a lot during my children’s childhood, and it was time to come home and to work on my family and to be present for them. Just take some time away.’
As for the acting, Dempsey was on the lookout for a role with ‘more edge to it’. Enter assassin-for-hire Angelo. ‘It was meant for me to do,’ he said of the show, with its hurly-burly of breakneck fight sequences, as well as the opportunity to bring additional awareness to Alzheimer’s.
Having set up a cancer treatment centre in his own name in 2008, after his mother’s diagnosis, Dempsey applied that experience to this. ‘I know what it’s like when a disease outcome is not good,’ he explained.
Angelo’s family and early-onset diagnosis are compartmentalised to one side of his life, in which he’s kitted out in the clunky garb of his photocopier salesman cover. The other half, with the snazzy Porsche, sees him decked out in a sleek uniform of black leather and impenetrable sunglasses.
When he’s zooming along the streets of New York, it’s often en route to the restaurant of his handler Dutch, played by Michael Imperioli. Dempsey was particularly animated when talking about persuading Imperioli to come on board.
‘I thought he’d be absolutely perfect,’ he said, recalling The Sopranos star’s initial reluctance to take on the part. It was his own brainwave to make Dutch a chef that ‘opened it up’.
‘It gave us movement. All the business takes place in the kitchen and then when we step into the dining room area, that’s where we eat and when the family begins. He created all of that.’
Dempsey has no shortage of good things to say about working with Imperioli. ‘Every time he was on set, you could feel the energy lift and the excitement from the crew,’ he recalled. ‘And there’s nothing more magical when that happens, because it brings out everybody’s best work.’
Of course, the two parts of Angelo’s life start to bleed together. How might it all pan out? Dempsey’s answer is straight out of Angelo’s playbook: ‘I can’t say too much.’
The first five episodes of Memory of a Killer are available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
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