Why Katherine Heigl chose to raise her kids in Utah
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Navigating a busy acting career and a life at home with her husband, three kids and eight dogs means Katherine Heigl has had to embrace the art of compartmentalizing over the years. When she travels for filming, she leaves her family at home — she doesn’t want to disrupt her children’s routines and schooling.
“I call the kids probably two, three nights a week,” Heigl recently told E! News. “I’m not FaceTiming every day — I’m at work, having crap cell service or terrible Wi-Fi. You have to be able to let it go.”
But when she’s at home, Heigl, who stars in the hit Netflix series “Firefly Lane,” said she is completely focused on her family.
“My manager, my agent, my lawyer, they’re all like, ‘Hey, you should probably read that script we sent you two weeks ago,” Heigl told E! News. “I’m like, ‘Right, right, right, right. I just hyper-focus on the world I’m in now.”
But when she does have to leave her family for work, Heigl said she’s really grateful that she’s leaving them in Utah.
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Katherine Heigl on life in Utah
Heigl and her husband, musician Josh Kelley, married in Park City, Utah, in 2007 and have lived on a ranch in Summit County for the past 13 years. The “27 Dresses” actress — who lived in Los Angeles for two decades — recently said leaving Hollywood for a slower-pace life in a rural Utah community was a good decision for her family.
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“I didn’t know how to raise them in L.A.,” she told E! News. “So I felt like I could do it here. I could be more on top of things that scare me and I could be more on top of the kinds of friends they have and places they’re going, the kind of activities they’re involved in.”
Geographically removing herself from Hollywood has also helped Heigl to be more present with her children, who range in age from 6 to 14.
“I could kind of decompress and let that hustle part of me go — a little bit,” she said. “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.”
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The Emmy Award-winning actress has been a prominent animal rights activist in Utah. Earlier this 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.
Her husband, Kelley, is the older brother of Lady A singer Charles Kelley. Josh Kelley’s latest album, “My Baby & The Band,” came out in the fall of 2020. He performed at Salt Lake City’s The State Room in support of that album.
Heigl isn’t the only celebrity to reside in Summit County. Air Supply’s Graham Russell also lives in the area, which he calls an “oasis.” And Bon Jovi bassist Hugh McDonald previously lived in Hoytsville, Summit County.
“It’s like an oasis, a sanctuary,” Russell previously told the Deseret News of his home. “I don’t have to go anywhere because I’ve got two square miles of pristine wilderness here, and my property backs onto the Uinta National Forest and that goes for 30,000 square miles. … This place is just perfect for me.”
When does ‘Firefly Lane’ Season 2 Part 2 come out?
Heigl has finished filming for “Firefly Lane,” which concludes for good after Season 2. The second part of Season 2 — featuring seven episodes — hits Netflix April 27, according to Netflix.com. The first nine episodes of Season 2 are currently available for streaming.
The drama series, which is rated TV-MA, is set in Washington and chronicles the 30-year roller coaster of a friendship between Tully Hart (Heigl) and Kate Mularkey (Sarah Chalke). The show follows a number of storylines — from the friends’ teenage years in the 1970s to the start of their broadcast careers in the 1980s to the present day in the 2000s, when Hart is a popular talk show host and Mularkey is a mother going through divorce and trying to get back into the workforce.
