Hayden Panettiere is looking back at a traumatic moment with a “very famous” man when she was just a teenager.
The 36-year-old Nashville actress appeared on the May 11 episode of Jay Shetty‘s On Purpose podcast to discuss her new memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning.
During their conversation, Hayden detailed being placed in a frightening situation aboard a boat when she was 18.
“You write about a moment in your career where a friend of yours takes you onto a boat,” Jay said. “You’re led to a room which has an older man in it and then basically told to perform sexual acts.”
At the time, Hayden said she believed she was mature enough to the be in a situation like that, but she now realizes how vulnerable she was.
“The fact that I was 18, even though I’d lived such a huge life and I thought I was oh so mature at 18 … scientifically, your frontal lobes don’t develop until we’re what, 25, 26?” Hayden explained. “So even though I felt like I could make healthy decisions, safe decisions, I wasn’t capable of being fully aware of what was going on around me.”
She went on to say that her “perspective completely shifted” once she realized she was “in danger,” but by then, she was “quite literally out to sea.”
The Heroes actress described the incident as both “shocking” and deeply unsettling, recalling how she initially believed she was having a fun night out.
“There was no hints of anything like that happening,” she recalled. “So it took me by surprise.”
Hayden said that the person who brought her into the situation was someone she had deeply trusted, noting, “It was led by somebody that I had grown to trust and see as a protector and somebody who had my back.”
She went on to recall being escorted downstairs into a very small room, where she was placed into bed next to an “undressed” man.
“She physically put me in the bed next to this undressed man who was very famous,” Hayden continued, adding that the man appeared to behave “like this was just an average day for him.”
Hayden said that she immediately went into survival mode, sharing, “That lion in me, that fire in me … my hair stood on end and I became ferocious. I was like, ‘This is not happening.’”
She said that she fled the room and tried to hide somewhere else on the boat.
“There was no jumping off and swimming away,” Hayden explained. “And there was nobody who was going to be empathetic to my situation. I realized that this was nothing new to them.”
Also during their conversation, Hayden detailed the emotional impact of feeling betrayed by someone she trusted.
“When you really find somebody that you trust, you hold on to them for dear life and you feel so lucky,” she said. “So to be betrayed like that is just an awful feeling.”
In another recent interview, Hayden got brutally honest as she opened up about her estranged relationship with her mom.
This Is Me: A Reckoning will be available to buy on May 19. It’s also available for pre-order now and you can grab your copy on Amazon here!
Disclosure: Some products on this site use affiliate links and we may earn commission for any purchase made through the links.
Posted To:Hayden Panettiere