After last being seen on television in 2014’s State of Affairs, Katherine Heigl is coming back to television again. Her newest show, Doubt, has been picked up to series at CBS, according to Variety. The show revolves around Heigl’s character, a defense lawyer who starts to fall for a client, who may or may not be completely innocent.
Heigl joins a well-known cast, which includes Laverne Cox, Steven Pasquale, Dulé Hill, Dreama Walker, Elliot Gould and Kobi Libii.
The show was originally slated to be picked up for the 2015-2016 television season, but the pilot didn’t get ordered. After reshooting and redeveloping the show, the series was picked up at CBS. Originally, KaDee Strickland and Teddy Sears were supposed to be the two leads, but they were replaced with Heigl and Pasquale instead. Most of the supporting cast members stayed the same from the original shooting of the pilot, including Cox’s character.
Heigl was last seen on television in 2014 on the NBC drama State of Affairs, in which she played Charlie Tucker, a CIA analyst responsible for briefing the new president, Constance Payton, who was played by Alfre Woodard. The show was canceled after one season after low ratings, according to Deadline.
Heigl may be best known for her character Izzie Stevens on the ever popular ABC drama Grey’s Anatomy, where she was a cast member for five full seasons and had a few appearances on season six before she was ultimately fired by Shonda Rhimes and the rumors of her diva-like behavior became more public knowledge.
Heigl’s character on Grey’s Anatomy was a fan-favorite character during her run and even won an Emmy in 2007 for her work and for her storyline after she cut a wire that was keeping a patient that she’d fallen in love with so he could get a much needed heart transplant instead of another patient. The patient, Denny (portrayed by Jeffrey Dean Morgan), ended up dying in the season two finale, leaving Izzie devastated.
When Heigl wasn’t nominated for an Emmy in 2008, she released a statement that was quoted in The New York Times, saying “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 material.”
Because of the way Heigl handled the situation, and voicing her desire to move to more movie acting roles instead of television roles, Heigl’s Izzie Stevens was diagnosed with cancer in season five of Grey’s Anatomy and almost died. She lived, but was written off in the sixth season and was eventually fired.
Back in April, Heigl made an appearance on The Howard Stern Show and, according to Entertainment Weekly, started to backtrack on her comments, saying it wasn’t handled the way it should have been and that she apologized to Shonda Rhimes, the creator and executive producer of Grey’s Anatomy. “I shouldn’t have said anything publicly, but at the time I didn’t think anybody would notice; I didn’t think 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,” Heigl said in the interview.
CBS hasn’t released its schedule for the fall yet, so it’s unclear when Doubt will premiere on the network. The show is produced by CBS Television Studios.