Ellen Pompeo has praised her “ballsy” former co-star Katherine Heigl for calling out Grey’s Anatomy.
Katherine was blacklisted from Hollywood after she was labelled “difficult,” “ungrateful” and “unprofessional,” after comments she made about working long hours.
Speaking on The David Letterman show in 2009, Katherine complained about working a 17-hour day, which she claimed was “cruel” and “mean”
The 43-year-old actress told the preseneter: “I’m gonna keep saying this because I hope it embarrasses them.”
Katherine starred on the hit medical drama as Izzie Stevens for six seasons before she quit in 2010.
After leaving the show, the actress landed roles in movies such as 27 Dresses, Knocked Up and Life As We Know It.
Speaking on her podcast Tell Me With Ellen Pompeo, the actress who playsMeredith Grey on the hit show praised her former co-star for the comments she made in the past.
Ellen said: “I remember Heigl said something on a talk show about the insane hours we were working — and she was 100% right.”
“Had she said that today, she’d be a complete hero.”
“But she’s ahead of her time. [She] made a statement about our crazy hours and, of course, let’s slam a woman and call her ungrateful.”
The 53-year-old actress admitted that Katherine was “f**king ballsy” for speaking out, adding that “she was telling the truth. She wasn’t lying.”
During a candid interview with The Washington Post last year, Katherine opened up about how her “difficult” reputation affected her mental health.
She said: “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’…”
“What is your definition of difficult? Somebody with an opinion that you don’t like? Now, I’m 42, and that s**t pisses me off. At the time, I was just quickly told to shut the f**k up. The more I said I was sorry, the more they wanted it.”
“The more terrified and scared I was of doing something wrong, the more I came across like I had really done something horribly wrong.”
Katherine said she didn’t think her reputation would affect her work as an actress, but that she was mistaken.
“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,” she confessed.
The mother-of-three revealed she fell into a deep depression in 2015, and finally decided to seek help.
“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.”
