After living in Los Angeles for two decades, “Grey’s Anatomy” star Katherine Heigl made an intentional choice to raise her family outside of the Hollywood bubble, opting to trade in the fast-paced lifestyle for small-town living in Summit County, Utah.
But Heigl returned to Hollywood to attend the Emmy Awards this week — her first time attending the ceremony in a decade, People reported. The evening saw Heigl — who won an Emmy in 2007 for her role in “Grey’s Anatomy” — reunite with some of her co-stars from the medical drama to present the award for best supporting actor in a limited or anthology series or movie.
The glamorous event, Heigl told “Extra” reporter Billy Bush, was out of the ordinary for her these days and is a stark contrast to her life in rural Utah.
“Do you feel as elegant as you look?” Bush asked Heigl on the red carpet.
“I do, I feel very fancy,” she responded. “I never get to do this, Billy. You know where we are in Utah, right? I live in sweatpants and leggings and T-shirts. I’m on a farm. So this is the first time I’ve gotten to dress up like this in years.”
Heigl and her husband, musician Josh Kelley, married in 2007 and have lived in Utah for more than a decade. Partway through her red carpet interview with “Extra,” Heigl noted that Kelley — who is the older brother of Lady A singer Charles Kelley — had recently performed the national anthem for their town’s rodeo.
What Katherine Heigl has said about living in Utah
Heigl has been open about her love for Utah — and how it has been beneficial for her family — over the years.
“I think my children sometimes wish they were in more of a hubbub-y exciting city,” the “Firefly Lane” star previously said on an episode of “Today with Hoda & Jenna.” “But I said to them, ‘I understand that you are sacrificing that in some ways but I still think it was the right choice for us as a family because I am more centered and aware of what’s going on in your life.’
“‘It’s a smaller town, I know who your friends are, I know who you are spending time with, I know what’s up with school,’” she continued. “It’s just easier to keep my finger on the pulse.”
Heigl has said that geographically removing herself from Hollywood helped her to be more present with her children.
“I could kind of decompress and let that hustle part of me go — a little bit,” she told E! News last year. “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 Emmy Award-winning actress has been a prominent animal rights activist in Utah. Last year, she vocally supported legislation to end the gas chamber as a form of euthanasia in animal shelters, the Deseret News reported. In 2021, she advocated for the Onaqui wild horses, fighting against a planned roundup, per Deseret News.