The choked up part starts when the video has about 1:30 to go
Thanks to the Huffington Post for pointing us to this video of Katherine Heigl getting choked up on The Tonight Show when talking about her brother, who died at the age of 15 in a car accident. Heigl has been doing the press tour for her new film with Ashton Kutcher, Killers. She’s been characteristically outspoken, but not as rude as in the past. Heigl used to regularly badmouth her employers but now she’s just talking some mild smack about her husband and her homelife. Adopting a baby has really softened her.

When I saw Heigl on Letterman last week I was struck by how much of a downer she was. She was focusing on how she and her husband are overly concerned about their 17 month-old daughter Naliegh’s safety. She got all serious talking about it and explained that she was feeling very emotionally vulnerable since she had a child.

Last night on Leno she was laughing on the surface but there was something very sad and serious about her. She admitted that everything had happened so fast in terms of her marriage and adopting and that she had “steamrolled” her husband Josh. Then Leno asked her about how she was feeling emotionally since she became a mother and she really opened up. I believe that she was entirely sincere when she started crying talking about how she now understands the turmoil her mother went through losing her brother. I have to question, though, why she’s talking about it on a national talkshow. Why so serious, Katherine? It’s heartbreaking and I feel for her, but at the same time there’s something so calculated about it. Aren’t celebrities supposed to come up with funny anecdotes to tell on nightly talk shows? This isn’t Oprah.

Here’s part of what she said:

That duty [to keep your child safe] starts to turn into this feeling that’s overpowering and overwhelming and I don’t know how to explain it, it’s so strange… Anytime I see a film or television show that has to deal with anything tragic or difficult between a mother and a child… I feel ‘oh my God’ the crying begins. I try not to cry because Josh makes fun of me…

I said to my mother, and I don’t mean to get maudlin. This is so awful I’m sorry. My brother died over 20 something years ago in a car accident. I was really little and… experienced that peripherally as a sibling… I said to my mother recently ‘I could never understand what you went through… until I held this child in my hands.’

She said almost the exact same thing on Letterman about getting choked up by movies now that she’s a mom. You have to assume that her sharing this personal vulnerability wasn’t some kind of spontaneous admission, and that she planned it out like this. Katherine is trying to show us that she’s human and has feelings now that she’s a mom.

I believe her, and I don’t think she was a horrible person before or anything, but this isn’t winning me over. It’s kind of making me think that she’s not that skilled at working the media. It’s like she’s trying to share a moment of weakness with us, but is looking like she has so little control over that weakness that it overwhelms her. I just don’t think she’s ready to talk about these feelings that she hasn’t even worked through yet. There’s a limit to what the public should be told, and we don’t need to see how much a celebrity is affected by personal tragedy. This is something to tell a magazine when she’s ready, not a live audience looking for laughs. Plus there’s something kind of fake about sharing such personal information on Leno of all places.

I asked Kaiser what she thought about this and she said that Heigl is trying to “work an angle on her new-and-improved image.” I find it suspicious, like we’re supposed to feel sorry for her. She has feelings, sure, but she’s still sharing them inappropriately as usual.

She was styled much better for Leno than she was for Letterman, I have to say.