Don Johnson and Hunter S. Thompson Were Surprising Best Friends: 'He Was the Crazy One with All the Drugs' (Exclusive)

Don Johnson and gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson enjoyed a surprising friendship for nearly three decades until Thompson's death by suicide in 2005.

"I loved him," the actor tells PEOPLE of the former Rolling Stone writer and author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. who was 67 at the time of his death. "I learned so much from him."

The two met back in the early '80s before Johnson, now 74, became globally famous playing detective Sonny Crockett on Miami Vice.

"We met back in, believe it or not, in the Andy Warhol days when I was shooting my first movie in New York," says Johnson. "We met because he was the crazy m-f-er that came in with a pocket full of drugs, and our movie was about drugs. So I got to know him pretty well."

Their friendship only grew from there, especially when they both moved to Woody Creek, Colorado.

"Lo and behold, he became my neighbor, literally my neighbor, like a quarter of a mile away at my ranch in Colorado," Johnson says. "And for the next 25 years, if I was away and I had a sick animal or something like that, he'd come over and sleep in the stall with my animal and nurse them back to health."

He was also the fun uncle to Johnson's children — actress Dakota Johnson has opened up about their relationship, telling AnOther magazine in 2015 that Thompson would always bring her odd but treasured gifts.

"He was a magical person to me," Dakota, now 35, told the outlet .

"He would come into the driveway at odd hours and rearrange rocks and things. ... He'd bring me odd gifts, like bird collars or weird fishing gear. Whenever I'd see him he would bend down and take his hat off, and I would pat his bald spot. I have no idea why! It was a thing we did."

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Johnson tells PEOPLE, "If my kids needed something or if my then-wife [Melanie Griffiths] was alone, he'd be there. Now, I chose not to leave her alone with Hunter for too long. But I loved him."

He says the two even co-wrote Johnson's popular Nash Bridges series together, which also starred Cheech Marin.

"Hunter was the progenitor of Nash Bridges," he says. "We co-wrote it together. But our version was unmake-able," he says with a laugh. "We had a senator's wife with Tourette syndrome. And CBS said, 'No, you can't say 'm-f-er' on network TV!' "

He jokes that's why he's now working with the streamers: His film Rebel Ridge was recently a hit for Netflix, and his current series Doctor Odyssey, also starring Joshua Jackson , is now on Hulu.

In the series, Johnson plays the captain of a luxury cruise ship, while Jackson plays the on-board doctor. As for whether he enjoyed sailing around the Mediterranean in a luxury yacht, the answer is, sadly, no.

"My luxury yacht was in the middle of the Paramount lot," he says, of the show getting a little help from movie magic. "But don't tell anyone that!"