Shonda Rhimes Once Had This To Say About Katherine Heigl

You may not think about her all too often now, but there was a time in the mid-2000s when Katherine Heigl didn't have the greatest reputation in the film and TV business. Starting from her time playing Izzie Stevens on the set of "Grey's Anatomy," Heigl somehow became known as "difficult" and a "diva." While she has mostly overcome this bad branding over the years, looking back, we're still interested to see how people who worked with her at the time thought of her. 

Take Shonda Rhimes, the writer and showrunner of "Grey's Anatomy," a show that has been on television for as long as today's high school seniors have been alive. A lot of Heigl's bad rap started with her public feud with Rhimes, which eventually got so bad that Heigl left the show early. Neither Rhimes nor Heigl have been exactly shy about their mutual dislike, but sometimes we stumble across an interview that seems especially harsh.

In a 2012 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Shonda Rhimes didn't sugarcoat how she felt about Katherine Heigl. And, being the excellent writer that she is, managed to convey her sentiments in just a couple of short sentences. In the interview, Oprah brought up the time Heigl actually asked to be taken out of Emmy consideration for "Grey's Anatomy" because, as she put it, the writing wasn't good enough to warrant the award. Remember — Rhimes was the one who did the writing. "That had to sting," Oprah said. "Or did it?" (We have a guess, Oprah.)

"Yeah, on some level it stung and on some level I was not surprised," said Rhimes. Then, quoting Maya Angelou, she added, "When people show you who they are, believe them." Oprah joked that she'd heard the phrase a time or two before, and Rhimes nodded, saying, "I carry that with me a lot and it has served me well."

Of course, Heigl later went on the record with Entertainment Weekly, noting that, while she thought she was "doing the right thing" at the time by taking herself out of the running, she did regret how she handled the matter publicly. "I could have more gracefully said that without going into a private work matter," she told the outlet in 2010. "It was between me and the writers. I ambushed them, and it wasn't very nice or fair."

Since Katherine Heigl left "Grey's Anatomy," it's clear that both she and her one-time rival Shonda Rhimes have more than moved on. Heigl went on to star in hit films, including "27 Dresses" and "Knocked Up," and more recently, Netflix's drama series "Firefly Lane." In a January 2021 profile in The Washington Post, Heigl reflected on being branded as "difficult" and why she's tired of saying she's sorry. "The more terrified and scared I was of doing something wrong, the more I came across like I had really done something horribly wrong," she said. 

Meanwhile, Rhimes went on to become the queen of all television basically, writing or producing all of your favorite shows, including "Scandal," "How to Get Away With Murder," and "Bridgerton." She's also writing the hotly anticipated "Inventing Anna," a biopic about notorious scammer Anna Delvey. Judging by a recent interview with TIME, Rhimes isn't thinking much about Heigl at all. She's too busy creating new, complex, and iconic women characters for TV. "I always used to joke, people turned 12 and discovered 'Grey's Anatomy,'" she joked. "That's been happening for 18 years now. At this point, it's sort of generational. We're building communities, and those communities are having children, watching their shows together."