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While we’ve heard from Katherine Heigl in the last couple years in interviews, her last public appearance was in January 2024. It was the 2023 Emmys, rescheduled after the actor and writer strikes, and she was part of a mini Grey’s Anatomy reunion to present an award. So where did Katherine pop up after the two-year hiatus? At a benefit for a dog rescue, which totally tracks, as Katherine has long been an animal advocate with the non-profit she founded in 2008 and, more recently, from the dog food line she started. We love dogs, the dogs are not the problem (they never are!). The problem is, the shindig went down at Mar-a-Lago, BOO! Back in 2021, HuffPost unearthed receipts showing that Big Dog Ranch Rescue (the group that was being feted) had spent nearly $2 million on events at MAL. Great, now we have to rescue dogs from the MAGA rescue shelter.
The “Grey’s Anatomy” alum attended the Wine, Women & Shoes Benefiting Big Dog Ranch Rescue event on Sunday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., her first red carpet event in two years.
The actress styled her hair in a bouffant to show off her drop earrings, and wore a colorful patterned dress. She completed the look with royal blue heels and a bright yellow quilted Chanel purse.
Heigl, 47, attended the event held at Donald Trump’s estate with her mom, Nancy Heigl, and posed for pics with “Dog Whisperer” dog trainer Cesar Millan.
…Heigl left Los Angeles and now lives in Utah with husband Josh Kelley and their three children — Naleigh, 17, Adalaide, 13, and Joshua, 9.
“I didn’t know how to raise [my kids] in LA, so I felt like I could do it here,” she told E! News in March 2023 about relocating to Utah.
“I could be more on top of things that scare me and I could be more on top of the kinds of friends they have and places they’re going, the kind of activities they’re involved in — and what the hell they’re doing on their phones,” she added.
Heigl shared that living in Utah was a break from her busy lifestyle in LA.
“I could kind of decompress and let that hustle part of me go — a little bit,” she noted.
“I don’t know that in any career you can ever completely stop hustling, but being able to separate it a little bit and choose those times of hustle versus just being in it constantly was really important to me.”
The “Knocked Up” star previously admitted she had a tough time bonding with her eldest daughter due to her hectic work schedule at the time.
She and Kelley adopted Naleigh when she was 9 months old from South Korea in 2009, and just three days later she had to start filming the movie “Life As We Know It,” she recalled during her appearance on “The View” in November 2022.
“I never saw that baby,” she said. “I was at work with three triplets who were playing my goddaughter, and I spent more time with them than I did with my new daughter.”
“I was always afraid that I had missed that opportunity to really bond with her and that she didn’t love me — in that moment,” she added.
Katherine Heigl has long been a divisive figure. She has a knack for raising valid questions, usually workplace related, but in a manner that repels people to her cause. I think we’ve come to the point where we’re able to hold the two truths that Heigl is probably a bit of a pill, AND she was overly punished by the industry thanks to a good ol’ helping of sexism. However, if there’s any clear, unambiguous line in 2026 that separates right from wrong, good from bad, it’s attending an event at Mar-a-Lago. Whatever the cause! She could have gone to [looks down at notes] oh yeah, ANYWHERE ELSE to support animals in need. But showing up at MAL in this day and age is a real choice. It says that you don’t mind the association, and if that association doesn’t bother you, then you bother me.
Lastly, y’all know I simply cannot ignore this comment: “I was at work with three triplets…” Wow, really? Three triplets?
Update by CB: Katherine has issued a statement to JustJared about her attendance at this event. It’s just as haughty as you would expect from her and does not acknowledge that she was at Mar-A-Lago.
“Animals don’t vote. The only room they don’t like is the euthanasia room at a shelter. They are completely at the mercy of us, and they have no voice of their own. This event was about animal advocacy—something that has always been deeply personal to me. Anyone who knows me knows that protecting animals is one of my greatest passions. My mother, Nancy, and I have spent years advocating for animals through the Jason Heigl Foundation. As a society, we should all come together to protect the voiceless and the innocent. This should not be a polarizing issue. Thanks to the incredible generosity of everyone involved, this event raised over $5 million to help animals in need—especially those who have been abused or neglected. I’m so grateful to everyone who showed up, supported, and continues to stand up for those who can’t speak for themselves.”
Photos credit: Getty Images and via Instagram
Questionable actions aside…
I honestly didn’t recognize her. She looks like a ‘generic blond woman’. Wow.
Back to the questionable actions:
EWWWW.
That is all.
She’s always had weird style..
No, I still think she deserved everything that happened to her. She’s awful. The end.
@ Tuesday:
+1
Right message about helping dogs, but wrong stage and perhaps even the wrong messenger. And what shelter has enough money to spend $2m on events??
Apparently Cesar Milan was there, too. So the type that has a cool $2mil and wants to spend it to pay people to attend.
Pet shelters and churches should always be on the brink of bankruptcy if they are doing their job correctly.
When she says “I could be more on top of the kinds of friends they have” I can only think that she was concerned that her kids may have diverse friends in LA. The fact that she know looks like she belongs at mar-a-swamp only reinforces that belief.
YES!!!! That was my first thought as well. L.A. was sooooo scaweeeeeee so she moved her family to a state that’s 80% white. She’s wealthy enough to live in a gated community in LA and send her kids to a private school so it just feels extra-weird to me.
“I could be more on top of things that scare me and I could be more on top of the kinds of friends they have and places they’re going, the kind of activities they’re involved in — and what the hell they’re doing on their phones,” she added.
It’s giving controlling. I get wanting to know what your kids are up to but that’s why you need to foster a relationship built on trust. Ask them about their day, their friends, the things they like to do etc. That really should be the type of relationship that isn’t contingent upon geographical location.
I took it to mean all of those rich kids and drugs, etc. She definitely would be living in a rich area of town. Private schools. Sure. But those schools are filled with rich, spoiled kids. Materialism.
I guess I’m dense- I just thought she meant she was afraid of her kids getting into drugs.
I guess that could happen in Utah as well, but so many actors say they don’t want to live in LA that her comment didn’t register with me as isolated or unique.
Yeah but usually the reasoning is industry-related and the answer given is more along the lines of “I just want my kids to feel normal.” And yes, it’s true that celebuspawn in LA are more likely to get hounded by paps and be more easily recognized than in some rural red state. I def get parents wanting to remove their kids from that environment and give them the chance to feel a level of anonymity, privacy, normalcy whatever.
It was the context she provided that felt….odd to me. If she’s worried about the LA drug scene she certainly could have said that and nobody would fault her for it.
Not suggesting you are not right. These are her children.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marieclaire.com.au%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F5%2F2022%2F11%2Fkatherine-heigl-family.jpg&f=1&ipt=317d5fe724f8b65898e1c5d9420f79b7c8c6ad4c97585ecadc3d14cfd124a1e7
She also has a sister through adoption who is a POC (iirc she’s of the same country of origin as Katherine’s oldest daughter), so I don’t think race played a factor in the decision to raise her family away from LA. She does sound a bit controlling, though, but I think that comes from how she herself was raised. She started as a child actress and by all accounts her mother was a “Stage Parent from Hell” type. She may not be pushing her children into acting but it sounds like she’s asserting control in other ways.
I’ve watched Knocked Up and This Is 40 in the last couple of years and Leslie Mann’s character in those is AWFUL. Heigl really had a point there.
She didn’t learn how to work in the system though. You can be loud and stand up for what you believe in, but then the system is going to kick you out of it. Instead she could have used her significant power at the time to produce and star in movies that weren’t sexist so at least there would be better content.
She wasn’t wrong in her observations about Knocked Up.
She made the mistake of criticizing the Grey’s Anatomy writers though — that could have been avoided. They were clearly mad at her as her character wound up having sex with a ghost. wtf.
You couldn’t drag me into Mar-a-Lago for any “good” cause. I’m sure all of their travel expenses and hotel rooms were paid for to attend it.
She’s a very good actress but has always been bad at handling her PR. This appearance is a strange decision, but I definitely think she’s watchable in anything she’s in (what a dilemma). She’s talented, but not savvy at all at understanding the optics of things.
Maybe she’s living her best life, I guess. She seems happy…
We stay infantilizing white women, don’t we? The optics? The owner of the place is literally killing citizens in the street here and abroad and displacing thousands, if not millions, of people around the world. This is not “optics”, it’s a willful decision to support him and his policies by providing marketing for his for-profit business.
This! Always an excuse for the tears.
Pardon me? I’m not infabtilizing her. I’m baffled by her decision to be at Mar-a-lago.
I only mentioned the word “optics” because peole are constantly mentioning how she sunk her own career from the peak of her career. It’s literally the first thing that’s always mentioned about her.
The comment about her living her best life was sarcastic. As in, I don’t really get what she’s doing.
I don’t condone her actions at all. However, I do think she’s genuinely talented which makes this sort of painful to see from her end.
I don’t understand the assumption of anyone infantilizing her though. I do think she’s a grown-up and I do think she has made a decision I don’t agree with, but I didn’t think I actually had to explain why I think it’s a bad decision since I’m not underestimating anyone’s intelligence in understanding how bad Trump is as a person and a leader. I didn’t think I had to scream it… I thought everyone already knew this.
You couldn’t drag me into Mar-a-Lago for any “good” cause, mingling with the likes of Lara Trump, etc. I’m sure all of their travel expenses and hotel rooms, etc., were paid for to attend it. It gives me nightmares to think about being in that hellscape.
So she garnered sympathy for being the victim of sexism in the workplace only to go to the HQ of the most sexist pig who has ever lived.
Anyone surprised here? Anyone?
I’m kind of shocked haha. I didn’t think she was a Mar-a-lago person. How naive I am…
People just posted an article of KH defending her decision. https://people.com/katherine-heigl-defends-mar-a-lago-appearance-animal-rescue-event-11924472
I saw that. And they reported that one comment on her instagram was “she made a choice!” applauding her and she responded “yes, she did!” with applause emoji. So, yeah, it was an intentional choice to go there for that event. No mistake.
In some of those pictures, she looks like Sharon Stone…..
So the animal charity held an event at a venue owned by a dog-hating man who always refers to dogs in the very weirdest ways (“died like a dog,” “choked like a dog”).
Nope. I could never. And Heigl shouldn’t have.
And that man has also referred to women who speak up as dogs. And pigs. Not a good look, Katherine.
I’m shocked this article isn’t reporting this quote from KH when interviewed at the event:
“Our biggest goal right now really is to diminish the number of unwanted litters coming into this country, which is what is overcrowding our shelters. ”
This is totally MAGA-coded.
I’m legitimately stunned. I now have to avoid her tv shows.
“I never saw that baby,” she said. She’s referring to her first child.
She was on set filming, and so couldn’t take the time to hang with a child she had JUST adopted. This is so weird to me. Like, you have money. You couldn’t have — I dunno — hired a nanny so that you could bring the child with you on location??
I was fixated on and confused by that comment as well.
“As a society, we should all come together to protect the voiceless and the innocent.” Um, Katherine, what about the voiceless and innocent girls who were trafficked from Mar-a-Lago? What about the innocent 13 year old child who was raped by the owner of Mar-a-Lago?
Clearly another MAGAt who is fine with child abuse.
No cause could get me to go near that place. Yikes. I also hate that dress on her (though I kind of love the other polka dot one with the boots). That said, I won’t criticize her decision to raise her kids away from LA or assume it has anything to do with race. She’s gotten a lot of flak for decades now but I don’t recall her ever being accused of racism?