Despite her status as an Emmy winner and leading face of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Katherine Heigl left the cast of one of the all-time best medical dramas after five years. From Season 1 to Season 6, Heigl played Dr. Izzie Stevens — a surgical intern and later surgical resident at Seattle Grace Hospital. Izzie cared for critically ill patients and even had her own bout with cancer, but her storyline concluded when she got fired and subsequently moved away from Seattle.
Heigl abruptly quit “Grey’s Anatomy” in 2010, sparking many questions about what could have compelled her to depart such a successful series. During a Variety “Actors on Actors” conversation with her former co-star Ellen Pompeo, Heigl opened up about how she really felt when she decided to exit “Grey’s Anatomy,” describing mental exasperation that became too much for her.
“I was up here in my head, in my gut, in my mind, in my life,” she recalled. “I was just vibrating at way too high of a level of anxiety. For me, it’s all a bit of a blur, and it took me years to learn how to deal with that, to master it. I can’t even say that I’ve mastered it, but to even know to work on it, that anxiety and fear — and stress is stress. And if you leave stress too long, unmanaged and unaddressed, it can be debilitating.”
Katherine Heigl grew displeased with her Grey’s Anatomy role
Katherine Heigl’s 2007 Emmy for her portrayal of Izzie in “Grey’s Anatomy” Season 3 was her first major award, but it wasn’t enough to keep her on the show much longer. In fact, Heigl was so dissatisfied with her material in the next season of “Grey’s Anatomy” that she withdrew her name from Emmy consideration in 2008. “I didn’t feel good about my performance,” she shared on “The Howard Stern Show” (via People). “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.”
Reports of behind-the-scenes friction between Heigl and executive producer Shonda Rhimes surfaced following the star’s public self-removal from the Emmys race. According to Heigl, bad blood with Rhimes wasn’t the ultimate reason for her quitting “Grey’s Anatomy.” Rather, she decided she was ready for a change after becoming a mom. “I started a family, and it changed everything,” she said in Lynette Rice’s book “How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy” (via E! News). “It changed my desire to work full-time.”
Heigl revealed that she then spoke to Rhimes about her desire to walk away from “Grey’s Anatomy” — a request that the executive producer granted. “I waited at home until I was given the formal okay that I was off the show. The rumors that I refused to return were totally untrue,” Heigl clarified.