Couple seeking damages over airing of naked sexytimes tape.
By sara brady — Written on Sep 24, 2009
Grey's Anatomy's Eric Dane and his wife, Rebecca Gayheart, are suing the snarky website empire Gawker Media over a video that showed them cavorting naked and intoxicated with a female friend. The video leaked online last month, and the two are seeking more than $1 million in damages for copyright infringement as well as an injunction that would prevent the video from being distributed further.
The video clip, which the lawsuit says was filmed last year, shows Dane, Gayheart, and former beauty queen Kari Ann Peniche spending some quality naked time together, having a totally boring conversation and aided, perhaps, by social lubricants and herbal refreshment. In the annals of celebrity sex tapes, like those involving Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, Paris Hilton and Rick Salomon, and Kim Kardashian and Ray J, it's actually quite innocuous, unless you're one of those old-fashioned types who doesn't want to be wandering, naked and stoned, around the Internet for the rest of recorded time. Are Sex Tapes Good For Relationships?
The original, slightly censored, post on Gawker has been viewed more than three million times since August 17, while the uncut tape has been viewed on Gawker's sister site, Fleshbot, over a million times. Gawker Media's CEO, Nick Denton, replied to the suit, which also names entertainment reporter Mark Ebner as a defendant, via Twitter, saying, "To quote the great Marty Singer — Eric Dane's lawyer — if you don't want a sex tape on the Internet, 'don't make one!'"
One of Dane's costars on Grey's Anatomy, Jessica Capshaw, told Us Weekly that Eric is already talking fatherhood on the set, which dovetails with reports that the 36-year-old actor and Gayheart, 38, are trying to start a family. "He's like, 'I don't know what I'm getting into; what's going to happen; what kind of dad am I going to be,'" Capshaw said. So that right there is another good reason to get that naked-and-high tape off the streets. Kindergarten is hard enough without all the other kids having seen your parents talking about their porn star names.
Via Us Weekly. Photo via Bauer-Griffin.