“You were just a little ahead of your time, lady,” Pompeo, pictured here with Heigl in the Variety cover released in June 2023, joked in response to Heigl’s comments, and referenced the creation of Twitter.
Heigl said that because she starred on a hit show, she then started to feel “a false sense of confidence” about getting “mouthy” when it came to “certain boundaries [she] was not OK with being crossed” that she “didn’t know how to fight”.
Pompeo, however, defended Heigl, and said she felt Heigl had been put in a difficult position.
”But also, can I mention the incredible amount of attention that you got very quickly is another thing that is like a disease in this town,” Pompeo said.
“Everybody gets built up, built up, built up, built up. They create this thing, and then almost wait for something to happen.”
Pompeo said: “As an outsider looking in, I saw a lot around you that wasn’t anything to do with you, or your fault. Not many people would know how to react to that much attention, that much focus, that much pressure. Who can be the most gracious, perfect person when all that’s … Certainly, some people are capable of it. OK, Zendaya is capable of it.”
As the duo’s lengthy conversation was released, both Heigl and Pompeo took to social media with messages of support for each other.
“I was so thrilled to be asked to participate in [Variety‘s] Actors On Actors, if for no other reason than to get to see my beautiful friend and catch up!”, Heigl wrote on Instagram.
“So many memories we share, this woman is such a big and extraordinary part…of such a big and extraordinary part of my life. I just adore you, [Pompeo], and I’m so grateful we got to have this conversation together.”
Pompeo, meanwhile, simply wrote on Instagram: ”Thank you for having us [Variety] love you Katie ❤️”
Read on to see what else has been happening with the Season 1 cast in recent years, and click here to read about what happened to Katherine Heigl.