Throughout its 19 seasons and counting, the ABC medical drama Grey’s Anatomy’s tremendous popularity makes it a fan favorite, and its original cast is highly recognized. Izzie Stevens, played by Katherine Heigl, was one of the beloved original five but she suddenly departed at the height of the show’s popularity amongst bitter blood rumors.
Heigl’s departure from the series raised many questions about the possible reasons for her taking such a drastic and sudden step. While gossip spread about her tiff with the executive producer, Shonda Rhymes, Heigl spoke out to provide more specific details shaping her decision to leave. See what Heigl had to say about her sudden departure and what happened to her character of Izzie Stevens.
What happened to Izzie Stevens?
Izzie Stephens was one of the Grey’s five. The group of blossoming young surgeons working their way up the residency ranks at Grey Sloane Memorial Hospital. The group included Dr. Cristina Yang, played by Sandra Oh, Alex Karev played by Justin Chambers, T.R. Knight as George O’Malley, Ellen Pompeo as Meredith Grey, and of course, Katherine Heigl as Izzie Stephens.
The group seemed inseparable and with the immediate popularity of the show, it seemed like we would be seeing a lot more of Izzie Stephens. Then halfway through season 6, Izzie suddenly left the show. In fact, the departure was so sudden, that they didn’t even film a final episode, they used a previous one. In season 6, episode 12 Izzie revealed her cancer was cured, and she was hoping for a new job to come through, which it does. She and Alex end things and she leaves the hospital saying that it wasn’t her home, it was a job, and she could do that anywhere. Ouch! She simply never returned, however, she did send Alex divorce papers. She reappeared in name only from time to time, most noticeably in season 16 when Dr. Alex Karev left his partner, Jo, to go be with Izzie who turned out to be raising his twins.
Why did Katherine Heigl leave Grey’s Anatomy?
Heigl’s departure from the show was a shock to fans, and many wondered what could have led the actress to leave her starring role so suddenly. There were a lot of rumors stemming from an Emmy refusal, and an uncomfortable statement issued by Heigl’s PR as to why.
Yet she denied the claims of any conflict between her and the show or its producers. Heigl, who was married to Josh Kelly and had young children at the time, said that she had chosen to prioritize parenting over her career. She said she spoke to Rhymes about this, who advised her to juggle both responsibilities. She told E! Online “So before I was due back, I spoke again to Shonda about wanting to leave. Then 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.”
She continued on, saying “[Shonda] wanted to try to figure out how I could do both [parenting and Grey’s], and I kind of wanted to do both. There wasn’t a great way to compromise the work schedule that didn’t negatively affect the crew or the cast. It wasn’t feeling fair to them or the show to ask them to bend around my needs.”
Yet Heigl had hit the headlines for refusing an Emmy for her performance in the show, saying ”I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization” she had decided against consideration, according to E. The cringe statement made it quite clear that all was not right in Shondaland. Heigl left the show soon after and gained a reputation for being “difficult to work with.”
Although Heigl denied any bad blood with the Grey’s group, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter as Shonda Rhimes discussed her show Scandal she even said there were “no Heigls” on it, and that she now refuses to work with “nasty people.” Seems pretty clear to us.
Yet now, over a decade later, Heigl and Pompeo, who is also now leaving the show, sat for an interview with Variety and the former Grey’s star took this opportunity to revisit the controversies surrounding her leaving. She claimed it was her anxiety and stress that had overwhelmed her and propelled her to step down from the series. “I was up here in my head, in my gut, in my mind, in my life. 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.”
Further in the interview, Heigl appreciated and congratulated Rhyme for her contribution to modern television and for casting women as the primary protagonist, saying,
“Kudos to Shonda for changing the entire dialogue of network television at a time that really didn’t have women in those kinds of roles in the story, didn’t have as much diversity. I was young. I wasn’t paying that much attention. It felt like a job, a great job. I didn’t realize it was as impactful as it was.”
Grey’s Anatomy is a groundbreaking show that rocketed many of its cast to superstardom. Several have stayed with the show for over a decade with Ellen Pompeo almost hitting two decades with the series. Katherine Heigl’s sudden departure may have been a shock to fans, but it certainly didn’t do anything to lessen the show’s popularity. Here’s hoping that any bad blood between her and the rest of the cast and crew had has been put to rest.
