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Emmy-Winning Star Makes Rare Public Appearance at Mar-a-Lago

Katherine Heigl was last seen in public two years ago before turning up at Trump’s private club.

Grey’s Anatomy star Katherine Heigl is back, and she’s raising eyebrows by hanging out at the president’s private club with his daughter-in-law.

The actress, 47, attended a dog charity at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Her appearance was the first time she’s been seen in public since she reunited with the Grey’s Anatomy cast on stage at the Emmys in 2024.

Heigl, a longtime animal rights advocate and owner of a premium dog food business, attended the event, called The Wine, Women & Shoes Benefiting Big Dog Ranch Rescue, where she was photographed with Trump mouthpiece Jeanine Pirro. The president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, was also in attendance, according to The Cut.

Heigl, who won an Emmy for her role as Dr. Izzie Stevens, has not made public statements about politics since Grey’s Anatomy skyrocketed her to fame in the early 2000s. When asked about the presidential election in 2008, she told paparazzi, “I don’t do politics. It’s not my forum, man, you know? I get annoyed.”

She has never publicly supported any candidate or policy and told The Palm Beach Post at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday that she and her mother support Big Dog Ranch Rescue because the organization works to “solve the pet-overpopulation issue.”

Heigl’s reputation took several hits from 2007 onward, ultimately torpedoing her career. She was labeled “difficult” to work with after several public comments, like labeling her breakout film Knocked Up “sexist,” and later requesting to withdraw her name from Emmys consideration for her work on Grey’s, citing “the material,” which came off as a public insult to the series’ writers.

Reflecting on her perception in an interview with the Washington Post in 2021, the actress 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?” she continued, “That s--- p---es me off.”

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Heigl added later to Red, in 2023, “I kept apologizing, which I now realise just kept giving the whole thing a heartbeat. I thought self-flagellation in front of everybody would make them happy, but actually, it made me weaker in people’s eyes and made me feel weak. I now think that one apology was enough.”

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Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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