Catching Up with Katherine Heigl (and Other Quick Hits)

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Admittedly I haven’t thought much about Katherine Heigl lately. She exists to me mostly as a name from a distant time, conjuring hazy memories of clickbait headlines and dog Photoshops from the early days of FilmDrunk. (Remember when she called Knocked Up sexist?? OMG!). I never watched Grey’s Anatomy, but long before that I do remember having a massive crush on her circa My Father the Hero, with Gerard Depardieu.

Anyway, long-time reader Jessica this week sent me a Katherine Heigl article in The Cut, and I think this is one of the funniest sentences I’ve read in a long time:

Heigl stepped out on Sunday at the Wine, Women & Shoes Benefiting Big Dog Ranch Rescue event, which was held at President Donald Trump’s members-only club in Florida.

“The Wine, Women & Shoes Benefiting Big Dog Ranch Rescue Event” is like the best Scatman Jazz Haiku I’ve ever heard. Also, I’m sure this isn’t factually correct in this case, but I love the idea of a charity dedicated only to big dogs.

You need a home for what? A chihuahua? I’m sorry, sir, but you’ve called the wrong place. As we like to say here at Big Dog Rescue Ranch, if you can’t run with the big dogs, stay at the pound.

And wait, what was that about Trump? Ah, yes, the event was held at Mar-a-Lago.

Heigl has moved to Utah and devoted much of her time to the well-being of dogs. She owns a dog-food company, proceeds of which go to fund a nonprofit that finds homes for dogs previously living in kill shelters.

Noble work for sure, but how does that get her to Mar-a-Lago, where she rubbed shoulders with Trump’s inner circle? Heigl was photographed with Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host Trump appointed to be the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. Lara Trump was also at the event and has supported Big Dog Ranch Rescue for years. The feeling is mutual — in 2021, HuffPost reported the organization had spent more than $2 million at Trump properties over the years.

Speaking to the Palm Beach Post, Heigl explained that Big Dog Ranch Rescue’s mission to “solve the pet-overpopulation issue” aligns with what she and her mother, Nancy, do at their nonprofit. “Our biggest goal right now really is to diminish the number of unwanted litters coming into this country, which is what is overcrowding our shelters.” […]

Heigl, apparently, doesn’t think the political affiliations of a rescue group should matter here. “Animals don’t vote,” she said in a statement to Just Jared after her appearance made headlines. “The only room they don’t like is the euthanasia room at a shelter. They are completely at the mercy of us, and they have no voice of their own. This event was about animal advocacy — something that has always been deeply personal to me. Anyone who knows me knows that protecting animals is one of my greatest passions.”

Haha, yeah… I don’t think you can hold an event at Mar-A-Lago and be photographed with unhinged animatronic Jeanine Pirro in 2026 (plus… all the other stuff…) and still play the “this was not political!” card.

Is it interesting to note that the woman who, at least according to the conventional wisdom, hurt her career by calling a Judd Apatow movie anti-feminist (not entirely off-base), has since moved to Utah, become a dog-food magnate, and gotten cozy with the Trump administration? Eh, probably not, even if the “Wine, Women & Shoes Benefiting Big Dog Ranch Rescue Event” sounds like something invented by a misogynist AI.

“Getting yelled at online by people perceived as liberal” and then making it your whole personality is the origin story for like 95% of the Trump cabinet. It’s a far more consistent throughline, I would argue, than any ideology. Stephen Miller was doing it even before social media at Santa Monica High.

If anything, Katherine Heigl now seems early to the game on couching a grievance in progressive values. Conservatives at all levels now do reflexively. A trailblazer! Though probably unfair to blame her for any of that. In a perfect world, Mar-A-Lago would be known only as the place for hosting Wine, Women & Shoes Benefiting Big Dog Ranch Rescue Events.

Oddly, I had just finished reading this article when Katherine Heigl appeared in a new commercial for Poise during the Oscars, which I was watching. It’s like she’d been conjured by my subconscious!

It used to be that movie actors wouldn’t do TV, and TV actors wouldn’t do commercials, because to do so would be to cheapen their brand. Megastars like Robert Redford wouldn’t even play characters who got beaten up, so worried they were about people associating them with anything negative and non-heroic. Now that Brian Cox shills for McDonald’s and Billy Bob Thornton gives the straight dope about cell service, those rules have been thoroughly shattered.

Anything I say here is going to sound like a diss in this context, but I mean this earnestly: nothing but respect to Katherine Heigl for agreeing to do a commercial in which she delivers the line “You gonna deny your mother a moment of mirth just because she got the giggle dribble?”

And during the Oscars, no less! A true “fuck it” moment. Good for her.

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Elsewhere… new Dune 3 trailer!

I’m nowhere near qualified to explain which parts of the Frank Herbert saga Dune 3 covers (Dune 3… chicks at the same time!), but suffice it to say for the movies-only Dune heads: yeah, baby, Robert Pattinson is in this one.

Pattinson discussed his fan-favorite character, Scytale. He noted that he saw the first two Dune movies multiple times in theaters. He said that on the set of the A24 movie The Drama, in which he stars opposite Zendaya, he asked his co-star, “How do I get in one of those Dune movies?”

Zendaya responded to laughs from the crowd: “I know a guy.” Pattinson got a call a few months later inviting him to join. [THR]

Hell yeah. Pattinson seems like the perfect addition here, and it’s nice to know that there’s really no level of fame and fortune that prevents a star from asking the age-old question: “So, who books that?”

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Finally: A new low in AI.

“Val Kilmer Resurrected by AI to Star in ‘As Deep as the Grave’ Movie — First Look” -Variety.

Yes, a dead Val Kilmer is going to star in a movie he wasn’t able to film, with the help of AI.

Five years prior to his death in 2025, Val Kilmer was cast as Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist, in “As Deep as the Grave.” But Kilmer, who was battling throat cancer, was too sick to ever make it to set.

“He was the actor I wanted to play this role,” says the film’s writer and director Coerte Voorhees. “It was very much designed around him. It drew on his Native American heritage and his ties to and love of the Southwest. I was looking at a call sheet the other day, and we had him ready to shoot. He was just going through a really, really tough time medically, and he couldn’t do it.”

Even though he didn’t shoot a single scene, Voorhees has been able to realize his vision of having Kilmer in the ensemble by using state-of-the-art generative AI.

But don’t worry: Kilmer’s kids have given their blessing:

He’s done it with the cooperation of the late actor’s estate and his daughter Mercedes (Voorhees says Kilmer’s son Jack is also supportive). […]

In a statement, Mercedes Kilmer said she supported the film, and noted that her father was “a deeply spiritual man” who resonated with a “story of discovery and enlightenment” set in the American Southwest where he made his home in New Mexico.

“He always looked at emerging technologies with optimism as a tool to expand the possibilities of storytelling,” Mercedes Kilmer said. “This spirit is something that we are all honoring within this specific film, of which he was an integral part.”

To be fair, the situation isn’t exactly unprecedented. Furious 7 used trick photography and Paul Walker’s brothers as stand-ins to finish shooting Walker’s role after he died during production. And of course, we’ve also put words in dead peoples’ mouths in Forrest Gump and had Fred Astaire dance with a vacuum cleaner (all the way back in 1997).

Still, most people’s initial reaction to this story seems to be that it’s a gross and weird thing to do, and that is probably the correct one.

Maybe in a world where AI’s cheerleaders weren’t dead set on shoving it into every aspect of our lives against our will, and hadn’t basically declared war on human labor, and weren’t using massive amounts of water and energy in an attempt to make their product viable, and that product hadn’t driven a not-insignificant portion of its users insane, it might be possible to imagine this as an acceptable loophole. Unfortunately we don’t live in that world, and so I must bid this project a hearty “fuck off.”

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