NEW YORK, April 21 (UPI) — Katherine Heigl opened up about her personal battle against being labeled “difficult” in the industry, telling Howard Stern she entered therapy to learn to cope.
The “Knocked Up” actress sat down with Stern for an interview, which aired Tuesday, not only to discuss her negative Hollywood label, but to apologize for previous criticisms of her most popular projects including “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Heigl said she had never attended therapy before facing heaps of public scrutiny for being allegedly “difficult” to work with on set. “I was not handling it well,” she told Stern. “I was feeling completely like the biggest piece of [expletive] on the bottom of your shoe. I was really struggling with it and how to not take it all really personally.”
And having once labeled her comedy film “Knocked Up” as “a little sexist” during an interview with Vanity Fair, Heigl reflected on the comment as “dumb.”
“I liked the movie a lot. I just didn’t like me. [My 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,” the actress said.
She later added she wished she had personally reached out to director Judd Apatow and costar Seth Rogen to express her regret about the comments instead of releasing a public apology. “I feel embarrassed. I don’t want it to feel insincere on any level,” she said.
In 2008, Heigl prompted public scandal when she passed on submitting herself for consideration during that year’s Emmy awards for her performance on “Grey’s Anatomy.” After being found out, the actress at the time stated she didn’t consider her “material” on the Shondaland series Emmy-worthy.
“I wasn’t feeling good about my work that season, no,” Heigl told Stern. “As an actor, if you want to get nominated, you have to submit your work. That year, I said I’m not going to submit because there is nothing I feel good about.”
“There was a part of me that thought, because I had won the year before, that I needed juicy, dramatic, emotional material,” she said. After her public comments, which was taken as a shot to showrunner Shonda Rhimes, Heigl said she personally apologized to the screenwriter.
“So I went in to Shonda and said, ‘I’m so sorry. That wasn’t cool, and I should not have said that,’ And I shouldn’t have said anything publicly,” the “27 Dresses” actress said.
“But at the time, I didn’t think anyone would notice … I just quietly didn’t submit and then it became a story, and I felt I was obligated to make my statement, and [I should have just said], ‘Shut up, Katie.'”
