FAME SUITS HER!
SHE MISSED OUT ON WORKING WITH MEGHAN, BUT KATHERINE IS HAVING A ROYALLY GOOD TIME ANYWAY
The law according to actress Katherine Heigl
As a fan of the longrunning TV series Suits, Katherine Heigl was disappointed she missed out on working with departing cast members Patrick J. Adams and Meghan Markle when she joined the show this season.
“I never met Meghan, but don’t we all feel a little like we know her, watching her for seven years as Rachel on
Suits? It’s crazy to now see her in this new role as royalty,” the 39-year-old former
Grey’s Anatomy star says. Like the rest of the world, the actress and her musician husband, Josh Kelley, watched the royal wedding on TV. “Some of the cast and crew got five days off to attend, so I felt weirdly like I had something to do with it,” she says. “It was fun to witness this historical moment, but also to see the photos when the crew came back to work and told all their stories.”
The actress, whose film credits include Knocked Up, 27 Dresses and One for the Money had originally reached out to
Suits creator Aaron Korsh about another show. “Then he told me
Suits was returning for an eighth season and I said, ‘Maybe you are looking for a new cast member?’” she laughs. “I didn’t know when I was talking to him that Meghan and Patrick were both leaving, but I guess I should have assumed Meghan wasn’t coming back. I don’t know the ‘princess’ rules, but she’s probably not allowed to continue kissing other men!”
It turned out Aaron was also a fan of the blonde star and so he created a role for her on Suits as Samantha Wheeler, the toughest new lawyer at the firm Spector Litt, who clashes with everyone.
“I was coming into the show as a massive fan girl and I wasn’t thinking about the pressure on me until I got there,” she admits. “Then I thought, ‘I really hope I don’t mess up my favourite show by being in it!’”
The mother of three (Naleigh, eight, Adelaide, five, and Joshua,
eighteen months) now credits her children with giving her a healthier perspective on work. “I’ve always been an ambitious person and I love what I do, but nothing feels like big stuff these days until your kid is sick or going through something hard and you need to be there for them,” she says.
As for her marriage, Katherine describes it as a “juggling act for both of us”, adding, “Josh will go on a 10-day tour of Europe and I’ll stay home with the kids. But he’s my best friend, so I get very lonely when he’s gone.”
Katherine seems surprisingly relaxed talking about her bad reputation when she left her role as Izzie Stevens in Grey’s Anatomy at the height of the show’s success. “My career took off in my 20s and I won’t deny there was some arrogance,” she confesses. “I was feeling pretty untouchable and on top of the world. I felt like I’d worked really hard to get there, so I was going to relish it, but now I’ll look at old magazine covers and think, ‘Girl, take it down a notch!’”
Katherine confides she went into therapy to deal with the backlash of being labelled “difficult” – and it worked. “There’s some of that feeling that I wish in a way I had known better, but like a mother to your younger self, I just have so much more forgiveness for that girl now than I did a couple of years ago,” she shrugs. “I was really mad at her for a long time, but now I feel like it’s okay because everybody acts like an a***hole in their 20s!”
About to turn
40, Katherine says she’s trying to embrace the positives of her age. “If it weren’t for this business, I’d find ageing a fascinating experiment,” she laughs. “The best part is feeling like I have a stronger voice. I keep saying, ‘Hey, I’m 39, you can’t tell me what to do. I’ve earned the right to tell you what I’m going to do!’”
Grey’s Anatomy now streams on Netflix, attracting a new generation of young fans. “I was in a store in Utah, and a man came up and said his daughter was freaking out and could she talk to me,” Katherine recalls with amusement. “She said, ‘Do you know Izzie Stevens?’ I said, ‘Yes’. Then she asks, ‘Are you her mother?’ It’s crazy to realise girls like that were only two years old when we started, so I’m going to be feeling my age when they recognise me!”