Rebecca Gayheart is reflecting on a profound moment she shared with Eric Dane at the end of his life.
In an interview with Variety published on Wednesday, the grieving widow opened up about the difficult demise of Eric, who went public with his ALS diagnosis in April 2025. The progressive, neurodegenerative disease “affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord” and often “affects control of the muscles needed to move, speak, eat and breathe,” according to the Mayo Clinic.
From interviews Eric participated in and public appearances after revealing his diagnosis, we could see the progression of his symptoms, which left him in a wheelchair and struggling to speak. But he still fought with every fiber of his being to raise awareness for more research to be done on the disease with the hope to one day find a cure.
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During her interview, Rebecca revealed that in the final weeks of his life, the Euphoria star participated in a voice restoration program made available by AI company ElevenLabs. She told the outlet Eric “was really excited about it, because he was losing his voice, and it was becoming more difficult for him to communicate each and every day. So it became sort of urgent.”
The program uses existing recordings of a person’s voice in order to create a synthetic way to restore a person’s ability to communicate — in their own voice. And before he passed, Eric got to listen to it with Rebecca by his side. She recalled:
“He was waiting anxiously to hear it, and when we got it from ElevenLabs it was a really big moment. It was a powerful moment. We played it, and Eric became visibly emotional. And when I heard it, I cried. I think everyone in the room did.”
That’s so touching. Rebecca added:
“He wanted to advocate for love and for the movement [around ALS] and so I’m there to do this for him. For a million people to get a voice to be able to communicate with their children or their loved ones or their caretakers or their doctors or in their job — this is a really huge movement.”
That’s HUGE. Especially for their daughters Billie, 16, and Georgia, 14. This is what we should be using AI for — not for mass surveillance and killer robots.
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[Images via MEGA/WENN]
