Katherine Heigl Reflects on Being Labeled 'Difficult,' James Marsden Defends Her

Katherine Heigl is looking back on the days when she was labeled as a “difficult” actress to work with in Hollywood.

The label was created after the actress called her 2007 movie Knocked Up “a little sexist,” then decided not to submit herself for the 2008 Emmys because she felt her material on Grey’s Anatomy didn’t warrant a nomination, and then complained in 2009 about her 17-hour workdays on the medical drama series.

“I may have said a couple of things you didn’t like, but then that escalated to ‘she’s ungrateful,’ then that escalated to ‘she’s difficult,’ and that escalated to ‘she’s unprofessional,’” Katherine said in a Washington Post interview. “What is your definition of difficult? Somebody with an opinion that you don’t like? Now, I’m 42, and that s— pisses me off.”

“At the time, I was just quickly told to shut the f— up. The more I said I was sorry, the more they wanted it,” she added. “The more terrified and scared I was of doing something wrong, the more I came across like I had really done something horribly wrong.”

Click inside to read what else she said in the interview…

Katherine thinks that her team shielded her from finding out about losing roles because of how the industry perceived her.

“You can be the most awful, difficult, horrible person on the planet, but if you’re making them money, they’re going to keep hiring you,” she said. “I knew that whatever they felt I had done that was so awful, they would overlook it if I made them money — but then my films started to make not quite as much money.”

Katherine also talked about how her family helped her though the difficult times. She also said she sought help in 2015 after she felt that she’d “rather be dead.”

“I think my family, my mother, my husband, my friends were scared. And I regret deeply that I scared them like that. But I just couldn’t control it. I had no tools,” Katherine said. “I asked my mom and my husband to find me somewhere to go that could help me because I felt like I would rather be dead. I didn’t realize how much anxiety I was living with until I got so bad that I had to really seek help. You can do a lot of inner soul work, but I’m a big fan of Zoloft.”

Katherine‘s husband spoke to WaPo and said, “If she said [some of it] today, she’d be a hero… I can’t imagine what all of that pressure did to her over the years, dealing with celebrity, dealing with people saying things about her that are not true. It would be hard for anybody to process that, especially when it’s unjust and a lot of it’s negative.”

Katherine‘s 27 Dresses co-star James Marsden also spoke out on her behalf.

He said, “She has very strong convictions and strong opinions on certain things, and she doesn’t back down from letting you know if she feels like she’s been wronged in any way. I’ve always seen that as just strength of character. I can see how that can get construed as being difficult or ungrateful or whatever. But if you know Katie, it’s simply because she has the courage to stand behind something she believes.”

On Katherine‘s move into executive roles, James said, “One element of Katie that I’ve always thought would define her was her drive. I never thought that she was going to be one that idles well. She’s not going to sit there. She’s going to take control and do it her way.”