Why Katherine Heigl's Izzie Stevens Left Grey's Anatomy

Partway through the sixth season of Shonda Rhimes' massive hit "Grey's Anatomy" (specifically, in the episode "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked," which aired in January 2010), we see Isobel "Izzie" Stevens, one of the series' original surgical interns played by Katherine Heigl, for the final time. To call Izzie's exit abrupt is ... an understatement. After getting fired from Seattle Grace-Mercy West hospital, Izzie flees, leaving her new husband, Dr. Alex Karev (Justin Chambers), behind. When she comes back in "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked," she suggests that maybe she and Alex can fix things; he tells her that's not possible, and Izzie is never seen or heard from again.

Characters leave "Grey's Anatomy" all the time. Patrick Dempsey's leading man, Dr. Derek Shepherd (often referred to as "McDreamy"), left the series in season 11, Sandra Oh hung up her stethoscope in season 10 when her character, Dr. Cristina Yang, moved to Switzerland, and even the titular Meredith Grey, played by Ellen Pompeo, left the series in season 19. (Pompeo is still an executive producer, provides the show's voice-over, and, for my money, pops up on the long-running medical drama often enough that it's like she never left at all). So, what happened with Heigl?

I'll be honest: a lot of nasty rumors concerning Rhimes, Heigl, and bad on-set behavior swirled around Heigl's exit, but I'll just provide the actor's own words. In the 2021 book "How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey's Anatomy" by entertainment journalist Lynette Rice, Heigl said she left when she and her husband Josh Kelley adopted a daughter from South Korea. "I started a family, and it changed everything for me," Heigl revealed. "It changed my desire to work full time. I went on family leave and spent three months in Utah and just got to be a mom, and it changed my whole perspective ... that was really the turning point for me. So before I was due back, I spoke again to Shonda about wanting to leave. Then I waited at home until I was given the formal okay that I was off the show. The rumors that I refused to return were totally untrue." Then, in 2022, she said her departure was also due to her mental health. "I think with 'Grey's' at that time, I didn't feel I had any other choice [but to leave]," Heigl said to SiriusXM host Bevy Smith in an interview. "I was breaking, it was breaking me, and I was young [...] I mean, I was vibrating at a level that I was gonna get sick and, you know, I did get mentally sick."

Okay, let's back up. Who even was Dr. Isobel "Izzie" Stevens within the context of "Grey's Anatomy?" When the show begins, we're introduced to five surgical interns — Izzie Stevens, Meredith Grey, Alex Karev, Cristina Yang, and George O'Malley (T.R. Knight) — who fall under the charge of the imperious yet fair Dr. Miranda Bailey, a supremely talented second-year resident played by Chandra Wilson. Izzie is just as smart and talented as her peers (despite some initial hazing from Alex over the fact that she used to be a lingerie model), but she gets a little too involved with her patients, which is definitely an issue when it comes to her wholly inappropriate relationship with heart transplant candidate Denny Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). After Denny dies and leaves Izzie a whole chunk of money for her trouble (the two briefly got engaged before Izzie cut Denny's LVAD wire to help him jump ahead in line for a transplant, only for Denny to die of a post-transplant stroke), Izzie still gets reprimanded for being too personal with the patients she treats. That's where things really get chaotic.

In the show's fourth season, Izzie and George have an affair, throwing their entirely platonic dynamic in the trash just for the sake of drama; shortly thereafter, Izzie realizes she has metastatic cancer in her skin, brain, and lungs, which seems, at first glance, to be a death sentence. Also, she only realizes she has cancer because her dead fiancé Denny keeps appearing as a hallucination, albeit one she can have sex with. (If you've never watched "Grey's Anatomy," take my word for it that this explanation never makes any sense whatsoever.) Eventually, George gets hit by a bus and dies (sure) and Izzie survives, only to get fired in season 6 and then, as I said, vanish into the ether forever. As for those rumors, the gossip surrounding Katherine Heigl's abrupt exit from "Grey's Anatomy" was at a fever pitch during that time, and comments from Heigl and Shonda Rhimes didn't help matters.

In 2007, Katherine Heigl won an Emmy for outstanding supporting actress in a drama series — specifically for Izzie's arc with Denny in the show's second season — but by 2008, she was telling The New York Times that she removed herself from Emmy consideration because she didn't feel as if the material she was given on "Grey's Anatomy" was good enough. I should also give Heigl credit here by noting that she walked this back in 2010, telling Entertainment Weekly that she thought she "was doing the right thing" at the time and felt bad that she had "ambushed [the show's writers], and it wasn't very nice or fair."

The damage appeared to be done, though, and Shonda Rhimes is nothing if not a vengeful god. In 2014, Rhimes spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about her hit series "Scandal" and said she maintained a "no a**hole" policy on the set, really clearing the air by concluding, "There are no Heigls in this situation [...] I don't put up with bullsh** or nasty people. I don't have time for it." (Ouch.) There's clearly no love lost between Heigl and Rhimes, but at the same time, Heigl has made positive comments about Rhimes since then. During a Variety Actors on Actors 2023 chat with Ellen Pompeo, Heigl spoke to the diversity shown on "Grey's Anatomy," soundly praising Rhimes. "Kudos to Shonda for changing the entire dialogue of network television at a time that really didn't have women in those kinds of roles in the story, didn't have as much diversity," Heigl told Pompeo. "I was young. I wasn't paying that much attention. It felt like a job, a great job. I didn't realize it was as impactful as it was."

All's well that ends well; "Grey's Anatomy" is somehow still on the air, and Heigl is still acting. If you want to relive her glory days as Izzie Stevens, the series is streaming on Hulu and Netflix now.