Hayden Panettiere opened up like never before as she looked back on some of her most painful and traumatic experiences during her budding Hollywood career.
Hayden Panettiere remembers a horrific incident
In the latest episode of Jay Shetty’s podcast, On Purpose with Jay Shetty, the Heroes actress, now 36, discussed a chapter from her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, in which she recounts being let down by a woman she considered a “friend.”
In an excerpt from the podcast that has now gone viral, Jay Hayden asks about “a moment in your career where a friend of yours takes you out on a boat. You’re ushered into a room with an older man and then asked to perform sex acts.”Recalling the incident, Panettiere admitted that although she was 18 at the time, she explained: “I felt like I could make healthy decisions, safe decisions, I wasn’t able to be fully aware of what was happening around me.”
Her friend Hayden Panettiere led her to a naked man
While recounting the incident, which allegedly occurred on a boat, she said her “perspective completely changed” once she realized she was “in danger.” However, by then, she said, “I was literally out at sea.”According to Panettiere, “It was led by someone who I had come to trust and consider to be a protector and someone who supported me.” The actress recalled being taken downstairs to a “very small room,” where, she says, the woman “physically put me in bed next to this naked man who was very famous.”
Hayden Panettiere reveals her reaction to the shocking incident
Without naming any names, she added that the man in question seemed to act “as if this was just a normal day for him.”“It got ferocious,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘This isn’t happening.’She revealed that while “there was no jumping or swimming away”, she fled the room and tried to hide elsewhere on the boat. She added: “No one was sympathetic to my situation. I realized that this was not new to them.”
Hayden Panettiere talks about facing betrayal
Also during their conversation, Hayden detailed the emotional impact of feeling betrayed by someone she trusted. “When you find someone you really trust, you hold on to them for dear life and feel so lucky,” she said. “So to be betrayed like that is just a terrible feeling.”During the chat, the actress also got very candid as she talked about her estranged relationship with her mother, her addiction, losing custody of her daughter and more.
