If Marsha hadn’t called that morning with the news that she was pregnant, Dane believes he and Derek would have been together, and Cal could have been a happy gay man, comfortable in his own skin and not living a lie. And that’s what we’re seeing right now: the absolute dumpster fire of a meltdown that is Cal Jacobs.” “We gotta break him down before we could build him back up. Therefore, we’ve never seen him,” Dane says. Heading into season two, “I looked at Sam and I was like, ‘Wow, we get to create a whole new Cal,’ because we’ve never seen this guy living his truth. “The bond we have off-camera facilitates in making the on-camera stuff a little bit more real,” says Eric Dane of onscreen son Jacob Elordi. He resents him, but I think, moreso, he resents himself for continuing the cycle of handing down the terrible attributes that were handed down to me by my father.” You’re my biggest regret because I failed,'” Dane says, unpacking how Nate and Cal’s relationship shows how trauma can be passed on through generations and, in this scenario, toxic masculinity. “Cal tells Nate that he’s his biggest regret and, at face value, you might think that bringing Nate into the world is a regret. Not only did it take “an inordinate amount of preparation,” but he also wanted to be sure it was as impactful as it was meant to be. That was the most difficult scene of the season for Dane to shoot, he says. You fuckers backed me into a corner, but you know what? I think you set me free.
I’m not allowed to form an emotional connection, and I’m an emotional guy. “But the reason I have a problem is this family. “I have a problem,” Cal tells Nate and his brother Aaron (Zak Steiner). He enters his house and begins maniacally laughing while urinating in the foyer, and when Marsha (Paula Marshall) asks what’s wrong, Cal - with his penis still out for the majority of the scene (“ I can’t play this character with one foot in and one foot out, so I have to totally commit to it,” he tells THR) - deadpans and simply replies, “I think I’m lonely.” This begins a seven-minute monologue in which Cal touches on everything from being forced to hide his emotions to son Nate being his biggest regret in life, to all of the men he’s had sex with while married to Marsha. Cal heads home and cracks under the weight of it all. When the bouncer tells him to leave the bar, he tries to wrestle him, too, and is eventually kicked out. Courtesy of HBOĪfter Cal and the man stop dancing, the man asks him if he’s crying, which he is, and then Cal tries to wrestle with him, like he used to do with Derek. “ I think he and Derek would have been together,” imagines Dane. Elias Kacavas (young Cal) and Henry Eikenberry (Derek) in Euphoria.