Josh Duhamel has Katherine Heigl’s back.
The 50-year-old Transformers actor shot down reports that his former costar, with whom he worked in 2010’s Life as We Know It and 2011’s New Year’s Eve, was a diva on set. Heigl has long had a reputation for being difficult, but Duhamel is now speaking up in her defense.
During an appearance on the Chicks in the Office podcast on Sunday, the Shotgun Wedding actor showed support for the 44-year-old actress, saying, “Katie Heigl gets a bad rap but she's awesome. She’s great.”
While he acknowledged that Heigl might have “said some things that she wishes she could’ve taken back,” he also said he’d never had a problem with her whether onscreen or off.
Duhamel thought that people were too quick to jump to conclusions about the Knocked Up actress’ character based on just a few incidents.
“I think that’s probably what happened to Katie is that, you know, she had a couple bad moments and that’s what everybody wants to just — that’s her label now, and it’s not really fair,” he said.
Heigl has been accused of diva-like behavior on a number of occasions.
Back when she was playing the role of Dr. Izzie Stevens on Grey’s Anatomy, she infamously withdrew her name from consideration for the 2008 Emmy Awards, explaining that she didn’t think she deserved to be nominated because the material she was given that season wasn’t good enough. Many saw that as a diss towards the show’s creator, Shonda Rhimes.
She also criticized her 2007 movie, Knocked Up, as sexist in an interview with Vanity Fair. She said she found it hard to love the film because of how it portrayed women “as shrews, as humorless and uptight,” while men were “lovable, goofy, fun-loving.”
To be fair, the 27 Dresses star has acknowledged that she could have handled things differently.
She also revealed that she sought therapy following the backlash over her alleged behavior. Back in 2016, she told Howard Stern that she was finding it hard “not to feel there’s something really deeply wrong with me.”
The fallout affected her so much that she said she stopped standing up for herself on sets for fear of being called “difficult” again.
