Izzie Or Isn't She? Heigl Breaks Silence on Grey's Exit Talk
Katherine Heigl
This particular doctor is in, if Shonda Rhimes has plans to keep her around. So said Katherine Heigl at a party marking Grey's Anatomy's 100th episode, where she for the first time addressed the rumor that Dr. Isobel Stevens is being written off of the show at season's end.
Should Grey's keep Izzie alive and kicking around the halls of Seattle Grace, "I'm there," Heigl told the Associated Press at the ABC serial's Friday celebration.
Talk of Heigl's Grey's days being numbered began last summer, when she appeared to dis the show's writers for not giving her Emmy-caliber material; Rhimes nipped that buzz in the bud in September. The rumor was resurrected last month when James Pickens Jr. told reporters that both Heigl and T.R. Knight would be leaving the show; Rhimes was quick to dismiss Pickens' "out of context" quote as "not true."
Heigl claims that she herself was and is still in the dark. "I was assuming that [Izzie was being written off] and I got a lot of shrugged shoulders and shakes of the head.... I don't know if that's a yes or a no," she told the AP. "No one will tell me, and I don't know how this is going to go."
Specifically speaking of her ailing alter ego's battle with a now-excised brain tumor, Heigl said, "I don't know if I live or die."
Heigl is increasingly in demand on the silver screen, where she has had one big success with Knocked Up, and next stars in the rom-com The Ugly Truth, followed by Five Killers (opposite Ashton Kutcher). Is she truly willing to juggle a TV gig with film roles? Says the actress, "I'm more than happy to make that compromise."
Grey's creator Rhimes declined to offer the AP a comment on Izzie's future.
