Hayden Panettiere’s estranged mother and former manager, Lesley Vogel, speaks out after the actor’s death at 36 years old:
“Young people who grow up in the entertainment industry — it is a struggle and it’s a very challenging industry and it’s not unusual for them to sadly… pic.twitter.com/7FsffbNe9o
— Variety (@Variety) August 18, 2026
In a phone interview with NBC News on Tuesday (August 18) Vogel said, “I think Hayden was an amazingly talented person in so many departments and I think young people who grow up in the entertainment industry — it is a struggle and it’s a very challenging industry and it’s not unusual for them to sadly find the wrong path.”
“I think it becomes very difficult to be true to yourself, and I think Hayden sadly lost her way, and I wish it were different. I wish she had stayed true to herself because she had many incredible attributes.”
“I just feel that she’s with her brother and they’re at peace,” added Vogel.
She also called out Panettiere’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brian Hickerson. “This person in her life that we have been trying to get rid of for quite some time was with her at her death and that was Brian Hickerson,” Vogel said. “There is a lot of history in the past that Brian has enabled Hayden many times and this is why her father and I had been concerned for a long time about him,” she added.
“Everything was business,” Panettiere recalled during The Jay Shetty Podcast. “I became the confidant and the assistant and the therapist and the shoulder to cry on and everything but her child.”
Panettiere said that while filming Heroes at 19, she told Vogel that she wanted to end their professional relationship in hopes of rebuilding their bond as mother and daughter. “I said to her, ‘I don’t want us to work together anymore. I just want you to be my mom,’ ” she recalled. According to Panettiere, Vogel responded, “You owe me.”
She told Us Weekly in May: “Unfortunately, we don’t have a relationship right now. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t leave the door open for the opportunity to present itself one day.”
