So. Much. Yes. Katherine Heigl Drops the Filter and Reminds Us Why We Fell in Love With Her
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What happened to the then 29-year-old actress after "Shonda-gate" and "Apatow-gate" was one of the most jarring public lynchings Hollywood has ever seen. The mob was fast and furious. The verdict was swift. And when all was said and done, the whole thing was essentially over...two comments.
After leaving Grey's in 2008, Heigl had been lying low at her ranch in Utah, focusing on family and raising her two daughters, Naleigh and Adalaide, with husband Josh Kelley. Then came the opportunity to do a passion project, a series which she not only stars in but helped to create: NBC's State of Affairs, a new political drama premiering one week from today. Two years in the making, it's Heigl's first leap back into the TV spotlight, playing a CIA operative and head briefer to the president (Alfre Woodard).
In what one of her co-stars called a "public apology tour," Heigl has been carefully doing press again since the show's pickup in May, answering questions about being "difficult" and "rude" by explaining that she never intended to hurt anyone's feelings, and admitting that she's "made mistakes."
Here, in what we believe to be Heigl's most raw and unfiltered interview in years, she finally stands up for herself once again--and strong-minded women everywhere. And we'd just like to say:
Yes.
This is the Katherine Heigl we fell in love with.
The first time I met you was right when you started Grey's Anatomy, and I remember being totally floored by how real you were. You didn't have a filter. You were funny and honest. It's pretty rare in this town that we get to chat with people who don't get fed every single line to say. So now, a decade later, given everything you went through, I'm wondering, how has that changed? Do you feel like you need to be a lot more careful about what you say? Can you still speak your mind?
Back when all that happened, I was a little naïve. I didn't know. At the time, social media and all of that wasn't what it is now. I didn't realize the impact that this comment or that comment would have or that it would catch like wildfire. But it did. It spread and it turned into something a lot uglier than I ever intended. Obviously I'm more aware of that now. If I'm going to voice my opinion and I'm going to speak my mind, I better be very clear about what my intentions are when I say it. It should never be flippant or carelessly tossed out there. I'm still going to have opinions and some of them people are going to agree with, and some they won't. But that's life and that's every single person on this planet.
I spent time trying to be more of a publicity packaged thing, and I just couldn't. I couldn't sleep at night. It kept me up. It felt so dishonest to me and it felt like such a cop out, like me saying that I am inherently wrong about how I feel about things or I am inherently wrong if I have something to say. I don't like that for my daughters. I don't like that for my girlfriends. I don't like that for any woman in this world to be made to feel like that. You voice, your opinion and you are made to feel like if someone disagrees with you, that now you're a bad person?
Above all else, you have to be able to respect yourself.
Yes. At the end of the day, call me any name you want but I'm going to continue to stand up for myself and I'm going to continue to be heard and voice what I feel and not be bullied into being a doormat, just so you'll call me a sweetheart. I don't want to teach my kids that. And I know certainly some remarkable women like Alfre and my mother and the women that I work with at the network and studio who ex
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