Katherine Heigl Launches Her ‘Badlands Ranch’ Premium Dog Food Brand, Opens Up About Life Beyond Hollywood

Coming from hit movies like Knocked Up and 27 Dresses, not to mention her Emmy-winning performance on Grey’s Anatomy, you are likely well-aware of Katherine Heigl and her life-long Hollywood career, but what you may not know is that she has dedicated many years of her life off-screen to improving and protecting the lives of the defenseless.

In 2008, Heigl, 43, co-founded with her mother Nancy the Jason Debus Heigl Foundation, in honor of her late brother. Referring to herself as an animal activist and advocate, Heigl and her organization remain committed to ending cruelty and abuse, in hopes of finding happy homes for as many animals as possible.

Today, Heigl is going one step further in providing our furry friends of the world the chance at healthier lives by launching her new premium dog food brand Badlands Ranch, named after the many acres of Utah land that she and her family call home. So, how exactly did this new opportunity come about for Heigl?

“We were approached by a company that partnered with me to do it. At the time, it was very serendipitous - I was sort of knee-deep in trying to find the right food for my dogs. I’m very passionate about and committed to a holistic approach to nutrition and health, so I was trying to find something that I could do for my dogs that I do for my family, for my children and for myself.”

All Badlands Ranch products are created using all natural and fresh ingredients that feature powerhouse superfoods often prioritized in human nutrition for a well-balanced diet. Heigl playfully informs me that she currently has six dogs as pets at her Badlands Ranch home, though she is fostering another two at the moment. So, I wondered what is it about these animals that motivate her to continue to provide this level of care and strive to make a difference.

“There’s this inherent human companion/pet connection that spans the dawns of time,” Heigl laughs. “I feel the sense of completeness when I’m providing comfort and love to these creatures. It’s such a simple need that they have and I can fulfill that need. I think especially as a mother now and a wife, a daughter - those relationships are far more complicated. You want to fill that need of love and safety and comfort, but it’s just more emotionally complicated, and with animals - with dogs and cats, it’s just not. It’s really simple.”

When I asked Heigl about the medical options and other services that she offers to animals on-site at her ranch, Heigl responded, “Yes, that’s my mother’s brain child. I keep fighting her on this. We’re not really supposed to be a rescue. We are a foundation that is supposed to help fund other rescues who have all the employees and the infrastructure in-place. We have two wonderful men who work on our ranch. What we’re trying to do there is have it be that halfway house between either a foster or these animal forever homes. Right now, our kennels are full. Most of these dogs are healthy, adoptable, loving animals. We’re their last hope. I hate to call it a business but it’s a pretty significant financial burden for most people and most rescue groups. It’s one of those horrible things where you just can’t say no and if you say no, that dog is going to die. That’s why I am so excited and grateful for the [Badlands Ranch premium dog] food because I think it’s going to be a really tremendous financial help for us to be able to continue funding these groups and funding these rescues and funding the spay and neuters.”

With Heigl coming from a Hollywood career that has seen its fair share of highs and lows, I wondered if her more isolated Utah home beside her music artist husband Josh Kelley, their three children and their many animals has benefitted Heigl’s creative process and overall mental health.

“Oh, a thousand and ten percent. I was just talking to my mother - she sold her house in Los Angeles after 10 years and we were really never going back there much. Occasionally for work, occasional trips back for meetings. I said to her It’s not my place anymore. LA just isn’t for me. There’s much that’s great about it and the weather’s fantastic and all of that, but Utah is sacred for me and the peace and the quiet and the just going about your day-to-day life. For me, there was just an added pressure and scrutiny that I felt in LA that I don’t feel here and I needed to step away from that in order to remember what I want my life to look like and what I want my days to be filled with and what I want my children’s lives to look like and feel like for them. No life is perfect and no place is perfect. We certainly have our struggles up here in Utah, as well. It’s just different - there’s more room to breathe, literally and figuratively.”

With her acting passions continuing, her dedication to her family’s foundation going strong and now having this Badlands Ranch premium dog food available to fellow animal lovers, I was curious if Heigl has noticed her mentality and approach toward business and her Hollywood acting career evolving as years go by.

“It’s so interesting, because in my forties now, I have such a different viewpoint of it all. In my teen years, it was this wonderful, exciting thing. It was my after-school curricular. In my twenties, it was the hustle! Now it was my livelihood - now it was how I supported myself and made a living, so the pressure was on. Then success happened and initially it was like all of that fear, all of the Am I going to get a job? All of that got lifted and it was glorious for a few years - and then came the scrutiny. Then I’d say in my thirties, I was really just a little bit lost in terms of what I really wanted, what I really wanted from my career and from myself. How much of myself should I be giving to it? Is it supposed to be my whole life? Does everything take a backseat to this career? It had for so long because I didn’t have children and I wasn’t married and had to re-define it for myself. Then I think in my forties is when I started to really look at it - it is an exceptional job, it’s one I’m very grateful for because I love it - sometimes, I hate it. I realized that it’s a job, it’s just a job and it’s not my whole life and it doesn’t need to be and I don’t want it to be.”

Heigl continues, “I went off to Vancouver for nine months to film Firefly Lane and it was an extraordinary experience because it’s an extraordinary story for me. It’s the kind of story that I love to see, read and be a part of, but I gave up being home and being with my kids and being mom and being a wife. I could only take two of my dogs (laughs) and I had to travel home on weekends to try to be here for Halloween, to be here for my daughter’s birthday - it’s a lot. So, if I’m going to do that, then I need to be telling stories that I am proud of and/or passionate about and I’m very fortunate to be in a position in my career where I can make those choices.”