Hayden Panettiere is recalling her time on Nashville, saying the set of the ABC musical drama was unsupportive and isolating.
In a new interview with The Times U.K. tied to the release of her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, the child star also reflected on numerous negative experiences growing up in Hollywood.
“It’s just shocking to me how little empathy people had,” she said of Nashville. “There were plenty of people who made the choice to not protect me.”
In her book, she adds of tabloid hysteria and the paparazzi at the time, “I was raw meat laid out for a bunch of hyenas to devour every single day.”
Panettiere also alleged that during the press run for Heroes, when she was 16, one of her team members gave her a “happy pill” to boost her energy. She recalled that the pills worked and she soon began taking them habitually, though she now believes they were amphetamines. “I was so used to wholeheartedly trusting the team that was around me,” she said. “If they told me to jump, I jumped.”
In other harrowing instances, Panettiere said an Oscar winner once exposed himself to her at an industry party and a close female friend once invited her, then 18, onto a superyacht, only to abandon her to a famous man, who was undressed.
“It was as close to being human trafficked as I have ever experienced, especially being on a boat in the middle of the ocean,” she recalled. “You were stuck and you realize, ‘Oh, this is why they choose to do it in places like this.’”
Elsewhere in the profile, Panettiere also discussed recovering from postpartum depression and her journey toward sobriety from alcoholism and substance abuse.
“It’s when I don’t have the outlet of work, it’s then I go into the ‘an idle mind is the Devil’s playground,’” she said.
This year, she appeared in the psychological thriller Sleepwalker and said she is aiming to appear on screen in action and comedy features. “There’s so much I want to do,” the Scream VI actress said. “I want to be creative. I want to get behind the camera. I want to direct. I want to produce.”
