Sexism in Hollywood: Is Katherine Heigl right to retract her comments?

Katherine Heigl hasn't really been in the press lately. One could even state that things have been kind of quiet for the actress of late. The press got the notion that the actress was "difficult" after she was less than complimentary regarding two of her biggest projects - film Knocked Up and TV show Grey's Anatomy. 

Speaking on Howard Stern radio show, she said of that fateful Vanity Fair interview in which she called Knocked Up "a little sexist": "It was dumb... I liked the movie a lot. I just didn't like me. She was kind of like, she was so judgmental and kind of uptight and controlling and all these things and I really went with it while we were doing it, and a lot of it, Judd allows everyone to be very free and improvise and whatever and afterwards, I was like, 'Why is that where I went with this? What an a--hole she is!'"

She also regrets not personally addressing her comments with director Apatow and co-star Seth Rogan, saying: "I did it publicly instead and kind of tried to say, look, this was not what I meant and this was an incredible experience for me and they were incredibly good to me on this movie, so I did not mean to s--- on them at all. I've thought about like, writing a note. I feel embarrassed. I don't want it to feel insincere on any level."

Moving on to her Grey's Anatomy comments, the 37-year-old said of not submitting her name for consideration for the 2008 Emmys: "I didn't feel good about my performance. There was a part of me that thought because I had won the year before, that I needed juicy, dramatic, emotional material and I just didn't have that that season."

A the time, she released a statement which read: "“I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization, I withdrew my name from contention. In addition, I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials."

When Katherine copped that her comments may have caused offence to Grey's writers, she went to speak with head writer Shonda Rhimes: "I went in 'cause I was really embarrassed," she told Stern. "So I went in to Shonda and said, 'I'm so sorry. That wasn't cool. I should not have said that... I shouldn't have said anything publicly, but at the time, I didn't think anybody would notice. I didn't know that journalists would see who submitted and who didn't. I just quietly didn't submit and then it became a story and then I felt I was obligated to make my statement and 'shut up, Katie.' "

Needless to say, these two incidents managed to get her labelled as "difficult" by the press, something which was understandably detrimental to her esteem. She wasn't handling the resulting scrutiny well, so Heigl went to therapy after she found herself at work one day and wearing shoes that were far too small because she didn't want to tell Wardobe and be deemed "difficult." She said, "I was like, 'This is nonsense. Stop it. Get some help and own your voice.'"

It's obvious that Katherine's comments and subsequent reputation damaged her career. Knocked Up was a huge film and for a while it looked like she was going to be a star, but she became a persona non grata in Hollywood. Maybe it's because of the comments, maybe it's because she really is difficult, but maybe she was right to draw attention to the film and call it out.

What do you think? Was her character set up as a 'shrew' in Knocked Up?