Katherine Heigl Says She’s Barely Spoken to Seth Rogen Since She Called ‘Knocked Up’ a ‘Little Sexist’
During an appearance on The Howard Stern Show Tuesday, Katherine Heigl cleared up some comments she made about Knocked Up in 2008, calling the movie “a little sexist.” In the interview, Heigl said that she’d meant to frame her comments as a criticism of the way she chose to portray the character, not the movie itself.
“[Heigl’s character Alison Scott] was so judgmental and uptight and controlling and all these things,” Heigl said. “Judd [Apatow, the director] allows everyone to be very free and improvise, and afterwards, I was like, Why is that where I went with this? What an a**hole she is!”
During a Vanity Fair interview, Heigl said the 2007 movie “paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys. It exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, on some days.”
Talking to Stern, Heigl said that her full quote was a comment about the way the movie “exaggerated stereotypes” for humor.
Heigl also said that she’s never really apologized to Rogen or Apatow because she’s embarrassed.
“I probably should have [called them],” Heigl said. “But what I did was, I did it publicly instead and tried to say, ‘Look this was not what I meant and this was an incredible experience for me and they were incredibly good to me on this movie so I did not mean to s**t on them at all.’
“I’ve thought about writing a note,” she continued. “I don’t want it to feel insincere on any level.”
Stern joked about doing the apology on the show, but said that they’d need to wait until Rogen isn’t high. Happy 420.
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“I ran into [Rogen] in a restaurant and I didn’t quite realize that it was as serious as it was,” Heigl recalled. “I walked up like, ‘Hey guys’ and it’s him and Evan [Goldberg, Rogen’s writing partner], like, ‘How are y’all?’ And they were very like [silence] and I was like, Oh you’re really mad. I didn’t realize that it was that bad.”
Putting her foot in her mouth was a sort of theme of her interview. Heigl also recounted apologizing to Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes after she spoke publicly about not submitting herself for Emmy consideration the year after winning for her performance on the show.
Heigl also said that her reputation for “speaking her mind” follows her everywhere.
“[Journalists have] said that to me, like, ‘Give us something juicy, Katherine, we like how open you are, how honest you are,'” Heigl said. “And I’m like, ‘No, you just want me to f**k up.'”
