“Nashville” actress Hayden Panettiere recalled a disturbing encounter from her late teens in which she says a trusted friend led her into what felt like a trap involving a “very famous” naked man.
Panettiere, now 36, shared the story during Monday’s episode of Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast while discussing her upcoming memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning.” She said the incident happened when she was 18 years old.
“You write about a moment in your career where a friend of yours takes you onto a boat,” Shetty said during the podcast. “You’re led to a room which has an older man in it and then basically told to perform sexual acts.”
Reflecting on the experience, Panettiere said she was young and naive at the time, despite believing otherwise.
“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, our frontal lobes don’t develop until we’re what, 25, 26?” Panettiere replied. “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.”
“It wasn’t until I found myself in predicaments that I realized — my perspective completely shifted, and I realized that I was in danger,” she went on. “But by the time I’d realized I was in danger, I was quite literally out to sea.”
Panettiere described feeling shocked and betrayed by the person who brought her there.
“It took me by surprise,” she said. “It was somebody led by somebody that I had grown to trust and see as a protector and somebody who had my back. To be walked down the stairs, it was presented as though it was a surprise.”
“It was a very small room, and she physically put me in the bed next to this undressed man who was very famous,” Panettiere added, saying it seemed like “an average day for him and this is something that happens all the time.”
“I became ferocious,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘This is not happening.’ But I had nowhere to hide. I bolted and I hid wherever I could think of on a boat… There was no jumping off and swimming away,” she said. “There was nobody who was going to be empathetic to my situation. This was nothing new to them.”
She said it was “disappointing” to be let down 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,” the “Heroes” star added. “So to be betrayed like that is just an awful feeling.”
Panettiere’s memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” is set to be released May 19.
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