It appears Katherine Heigl had rather a lot to get off her chest when she went on the Howard Stern SiriusXM radio show yesterday... and get it off her chest she certainly did!
Not only did she speak out about the time she withdrew herself from the Emmy nominations over her lack of a 'juicy' storyline in Grey's Anatomy, but she also apologised for criticising the hit comedy Knocked Up, in which she also starred.
Who knew she had so much to be sorry for?
As many might recall, in 2007, Katherine won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her portrayal of Izzie Stevens on ABC's award-winning medical drama Grey's Anatomy. The following year, however, she withdrew her name from the nomination running, citing her lack of 'dramatic' airtime.
Speaking to Howard Stern, Katherine said of the instance: 'I didn't feel good about my performance and I didn't feel... there was a part of me that thought, because I had won the year before, that I needed juicy, dramatic, emotional material and I just didn't have that that season.'
When Howard asked why she wasn't given such material – especially given her Emmy win the year before – and went on to question whether people were 'against' her, Katherine replied: 'I don't think so, I hope not.'
She continued to say it was probably because there were 12 'series regulars' on the show, all of whom deserved their own dramatic storylines, and that she probably took the situation a little too personally.
Stern then asked whether the show's producer's gave her 'flack' for it, to which Katherine responded: 'No. I went in cos I was really embarrassed. So I went in to Shonda [Rhimes, the show's producer] and said, "I'm so sorry. That wasn't cool, like, I should not have said that" – and I shouldn't have said anything publically, but at the time I didn't think anybody would notice.
'I didn't know that journalists would see who submitted and who didn't. I just quietly didn't submit. And then it became a story, and then I felt I was obligated to make my statement and... shut up Katie!'
The statement she made was printed in the Los Angeles Times in June 2008, and followed: 'I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organisation, I withdrew my name from contention.'
'In addition, I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials.'
Naturally this upset Grey's Anatomy producers and indeed other cast members too, and in 2010, Katherine left the show.
One foot-in-mouth scenario is normally enough to address in one interview, but Katherine later found herself addressing another – her comments about hit comedy Knocked Up being 'a little sexist'.
Speaking to Vanity Fair in 2008, Katherine had said of the movie: 'It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys.
'It exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, on some days. I'm playing such a b**ch; why is she being such a killjoy? Why is this how you're portraying women? Ninety-eight percent of the time it was an amazing experience, but it was hard for me to love the movie.'
Naturally, her comments irked her co-star Seth Rogen more than a little, not to mention the film's director, Judd Apatow. Katherine said she had no idea her comments had had such an impact, until she ran into Seth at a restaurant a few years later.
'I walked up like, "Hey, guys!"… And they were like very, like, [really cold] and I was like, "Oh, you're really mad, I didn't realise that it was that bad" … I get it.'
She explained her comments by saying that whilst she liked the movie 'a lot', she just didn't like herself as her character – a TV star who gets pregnant by an unambitious yet aimiable man (played by Seth). 'She [her character] was kind of like, she was so judgmental and kind of uptight and controlling and all these things and I really went with it while we were doing it, and a lot of it — Judd allows everyone to be very free and improvise and whatever — and afterwards I was like, "Why is that where I went with this? What an a--hole she is!"' Katherine told Stern.
She said she got overwhelmed by the enormity of being Vanity Fair's cover star, and when journalist Norman Jean Roy addressed comments that the film had been labelled a little sexist, Katherine felt obligated to respond.
'It was a huge opportunity for me, I was being interviewed for Vanity Fair. Like, I was on the cover of Vanity Fair, it was a huge big deal for me! And the journalist was really, really lovely. I don't mean to imply on any level that she trapped me ... she just said, "You know a lot of women felt that it was a little sexist"
'So then I felt obligated to answer that, and so I tried in my very, sort of ungracious way to answer why I felt that it, maybe, was a little.
'If you read the whole quote, I'm just saying that can be the nature of broad comedy, they're exaggerating stereotypes, that's what makes it funny, but they just took the sexist thing out.'
When Stern posited she broke the golden rule of Hollywood – NEVER to criticise the movie you're in – Katherine agreed, saying: 'No. That was dumb, yep.'
'I absolutely owe anyone an apology I unwittingly offended or disrespected,' she said later, and went on to conclude: 'I get it. It was an immature dumbass moment.'
As a result of the scrutiny she received from these two very public instances, Katherine revealed she had to undergo therapy. 'I had never done therapy before, until a couple of years ago,' she said. 'I started going because of the scrutiny. I was not handling it well. I was feeling completely like the biggest piece of sh** on the bottom of your shoe.'
'I was really struggling with it and how to not take it all personally and not to feel there was something deeply wrong with me,' she continued. 'It was really, at first, very hard.'
What a revelatory interview...
Let's hope her honest and candid remarks draw a line under what has been, and that her two upcoming films, Unforgettable and The Nut Job 2, prove to be a great success.
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