Katherine Heigl Returns to the Emmys Red Carpet After 10-Year Hiatus: See Her Then and Now!

Katherine Heigl is back on the Emmys red carpet!

The star, 45, stepped out for the 2023 Emmy Awards on Monday, her first time at the show since 2014, wearing the reigning color of awards season — bright red!

She stepped out in a strapless Reem Acra dress with a statement pin at the waist and glittering Rahaminov diamonds. she also matched her makeup to the dress with a bold red lip.

I wore my shoes, she told E!’s Live from the Red Carpet. “My sparkly Louboutins.”

Heigl, who recently starred in the Netflix hit Firefly Lanehe intends to reunite with her Grey’s Anatomy costars at this year’s ceremony.

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Heigl attended the 2014 Emmys with her musician husband Josh Kelley. That year, she presented wearing a vintage John Hayles silk dress, Chopard jewels, Christian Louboutin shoes and an Oroton clutch.

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In 2007, Heigl won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Izzie Stevens on the long-running ABC medical drama. She gave a nod to Old Hollywood glamor in a white Zac Posen fishtail dress, a Mary Norton clutch and classic red lips, with her hair up romantically.

The following year, she turned down an Emmy for her work on grey’s anatomy, which became a highly publicized controversy at the time.

Friends of Katherine Heigl designed an Eras-style shirt for her 45th birthday — including a nod to her teenage modeling days

She opened up about the backlash to Howard Stern in 2016, saying she “didn’t feel good” about her performance that season, so she didn’t submit to the Emmys review committee — and she didn’t expect her decision to become public or blow up.

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“There was a part of me that thought, because I won the year before, that I needed juicy, dramatic, emotional material, and I just didn’t have that season,” she explained at the time, adding that he was “really embarrassed” after he made it to covers and apologized to showrunner Shonda Rhimes.

“I went to Shonda and said, ‘I’m so sorry, that wasn’t cool; I shouldn’t have said that,’ Heigl recalled. “I shouldn’t have said anything publicly, but at the time I didn’t think anyone would notice; I didn’t think the journalists would see who reported and who didn’t” t. I just didn’t submit quietly. And then it became a story, and that’s when I felt I had to make my statement.”

The actress has since opened up about the mental blow of being labeled “difficult” for speaking out about her experiences on Grey’s Anatomy. And in recent years, her colleagues have also spoken in support of her honesty.

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Ellen Pompeo (who played Meredith Gray for 19 seasons) defended Heigl in her episode Tell me podcast last spring, when she was joined by another Grey’s alum, Kate Walsh. The pair discussed comments Heigl made more than a decade ago about working on the show.

“I remember Heigl saying something on a talk show about the crazy hours we were working, and she was 100 percent right,” Pompeo said at the time. “If she said that today, she’d be a total hero. But she’s ahead of her time, she made a statement about our crazy hours and, of course, [it was like], ‘Let’s fire the woman and call her ungrateful.’ ”

Ellen Pompeo Backs Katherine Heigl’s ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Workplace Claims: She Was ‘Cheeky’

Added Pompeo: “When it’s true, she’s 100 percent honest, and it’s absolutely true what she said. She was fucking crazy to say that — she was telling the truth. She wasn’t lying!”

Watch PEOPLE’s full coverage of the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards live on Fox from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

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Source: HIS Education