Hayden Panettiere is claiming a major beauty brand ended its association with her amid her battle with postpartum depression.
The Heroes actress details her mental health struggles after welcoming daughter Kaya in 2011 in her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, an excerpt of which was published by The Cut on Tuesday, May 12.
Panettiere, 36, writes candidly about abusing alcohol to cope with her depression and her various stints in rehab during her time on the hit show Nashville.
“One day early in season 4, I arrived on set bleary-eyed, still shaking off the effects of my [insomnia] meds the night before. I’ve never been a morning person, but on the medication, I was a zombie,” she shares. “I couldn’t go on set like that, so I decided that before getting into the makeup chair I’d put my head down for a nap. Two hours later, I woke up in the hospital.”
“‘What happened?’ I asked, my eyes darting from one end of my room to another. ‘I have no memory of coming here. Did something happen to me?’” the actress adds. “A kind nurse who was about to take my vital signs spoke up. ‘Someone at your work found you asleep on the sofa and couldn’t wake you up. So, she called an ambulance.’”
During Nashville’s fourth season, Panettiere’s character, Juliette Barnes, was temporarily written out to facilitate her going to rehab, but she said she lost another job.
“The producers had no choice but to write me out of the script temporarily — something that killed me because I’d always prided myself on my professionalism — and I issued a statement about where I was going and why,” she writes. “My fans and the press were hugely sympathetic — and I’ll always be grateful for that — but a part of my career I’d come to depend on suffered. Neutrogena canceled my long-standing contract, and it was yet another blow in a year that had given almost nothing else.”
Panettiere, who appeared in various advertising campaigns for Neutrogena, alluded to her partnership with the brand ending in her recent Us Weekly cover story.
“I talk about traumatic moments and things that people don’t even know about,” she exclusively told Us of writing about the darkest chapters of her life. “The abuse I went through at the hands of people that were supposed to be there to protect me. Admitting to all of the things that I did. I knew if I was going to do this, I wanted to be brutally, painfully honest. When I was honest about postpartum depression on Live With Kelly and Michael [in 2015], the repercussions were shocking. After that interview, I had no idea when I walked off that stage that I was going to get the call saying, ‘Neutrogena wants to fire you. They’re not OK with this.’ And you’re going, ‘Wait a second, of all the things, how can they judge me about something that is so human and so real?’”
Us Weekly has reached out to Neutrogena’s parent company, Kenvue, for comment.
This Is Me: A Reckoning is published on Tuesday, May 19.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
