Why Hayden Panettiere Didn’t Name the Celebrities Involved in Harrowing Experiences in Her Memoir
In Hayden Panettiere’s new memoir, she describes two harrowing experiences with men in the entertainment industry. While she goes into detail about what happened, she does not reveal the identity of either man. She said that she wants to protect herself from any repercussions that might come from naming them directly.
Hayden Panettiere shared why she doesn’t name her alleged abusers in her memoir
In her new memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, Panettiere recalls two encounters with who she described as well-known figures. She did not name them. While people have tried to uncover to whom Panettiere is referring, she has chosen to keep the identities to herself.
“Yeah, because it was a bad look for them and [the people I didn’t name] were generally people within my industry,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “They’re people I could run into again.”
She said she wanted to protect herself against any potential lawsuits that could come from naming people directly.
“I didn’t want to put myself in that position,” she said. “Things happened a long time ago, but it was to protect me and my company from being sued by some very pissed-off famous people.”
Hayden Panettiere detailed an experience with a man on a boat in her memoir
In one of the encounters Panettiere detailed, she said a friend led her downstairs on a yacht. There, she found a famous man lying under the covers of a bed.
‘She physically put me in the bed next to this undressed man who was very famous,” Panettiere wrote. “He had his hands [clasped behind his head] like this was just, you know, an average day for him and this is something that happens all the time.”
She told the man that nothing would happen with him before immediately leaving the room. While she walked away, she said she felt horror when she realized she was still stuck on the ocean. She felt especially betrayed by her friend.
“[It’s] disappointing when somebody lets you down like that — and I’d been let down so much before,” she wrote. “When you really find somebody that you trust, you hold on to them for dear life and you feel so lucky. So to be betrayed like that is just an awful feeling.”
She said an A-lister also exposed himself to her
In another instance, Panettiere said she was at a party when an “Oscar-winning actor and director” exposed himself to her. As she prepared to leave, the unnamed celebrity warned her to “be careful when you leave because someone spit their gum out somewhere, and I got some on my pants.”
“I looked down and recoiled,” Panettiere wrote. “This well-respected, award-winning actor’s testicles were hanging out from his unzipped fly.”
She said the encounter left her feeling stunned.
“The gum on the pants, however, was a head-scratcher,” she wrote. “It hadn’t hurt me and I was sure it was a drunken joke, but I’d never seen a grown man do something like that. I was shocked.”
