Holly Robinson Peete is following up her previous comments on Hayden Panettiere to share more about her own experience with having a mom as her manager.
If you didn’t see already, the Hallmark Channel actress went viral this week when she called out Hayden‘s mother for what she said after the actress’ tragic passing.
Now, Holly has written her first-ever Substack article to go more in-depth into her thoughts and explain why she was compelled to speak out.
What Holly Robinson Peete originally said about Hayden Panettiere
Holly called out Lesley Vogel‘s comments about her daughter’s death. In her first public statement after the tragedy, she 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.”
Holly pointed out that Lesley never called Hayden her daughter.
“We know this young lady clearly had so many issues, but if you’re not gonna take accountability for the fact that you put her in the business that eventually messed her up then nothing you say has any integrity,” Holly tweeted. “She didn’t even say ‘I will miss my daughter’ or ‘I loved my daughter the best way I could.’ Has she even mentioned the word daughter? There were so many things she could have said to show us that she was a caring, mother… And now both of her children are gone. It is all so tragic.”
Holly Robinson Peete opens up about having her mom as a manager
In her first Substack article, Holly explained why she relates to Hayden‘s story in “many ways.”
My mother, Dolores Robinson, managed my career for thirty years. She wasn’t a parent who backed into the job because her cute camera ready kid kept landing auditions. I was not her only client as she was already a well-established talent manager, for more than a decade before I ever got 21 Jump Street, the role that put me on the map. And granted I was in my 20s and a college graduate when my break came. Not a child.
But I still relate in many ways.
Holly‘s mom became a talent manager after fleeing a bad marriage in the 1970s, eventually representing stars like LeVar Burton, Martin Sheen, Pierce Brosnan, Wesley Snipes, and more.
When a parent starts managing you as a baby and that’s the only relationship you’ve ever known with them, the whole thing can curdle into something purely transactional and every conversation shadowed by business, every piece of advice hard to separate from a client note. I believe that’s what happened with Hayden.
My mother had a strong identity and a career before she started managing me, which I believe gave us more to stand on when it came time to pull the two apart.
And I did need to pull them apart. There came a point where I told her, plainly: I just want you to be my mom now. Not my manager. Not my advisor. My mom. It did not go over well. She was in her seventies, still sharp, still convinced she had more to give professionally, and not remotely ready to let go. It caused a real rift… one of the hardest conversations of my life, and the fallout lasted a long time. Too long.
But we healed it.
Holly explained why she understands the Panettiere family’s story.
I understand, maybe better than most, how genuinely hard it is to separate a parent from a manager especially when they’ve been the same person your whole life like in Hayden’s case.
I understand the complexity of finances, loyalty, resentment and love that gets tangled up in an arrangement like that. So I don’t say any of this without some empathy for how complicated Lesley Vogel’s relationship with her daughter must have become.
But understanding the difficulty of that relationship is different from excusing how she chose to speak about it in the days right after losing her child. This was her second child she’s lost in 3 years! And in that moment, she chose for the language of an industry professional instead of a mother. I was hoping, we all were-honestly, for a softer part of her to come through- grief, remorse, tenderness, anything. I think we were hoping she would say something to help us grieve her daughter. Instead it felt like she used the platform to shift blame elsewhere, and Hayden, an adult who publicly bore responsibility for her own struggles, got talked about like a project that hadn’t panned out.
That’s what triggered me. Not just sympathy for Hayden, but seeing the specific ache of watching a mom/manager relationship fail to become, even at the end, just a mom.
You can read the full article on Substack.
The post Holly Robinson Peete Reveals Her Own Momager Story & How It Relates to Hayden Panettiere’s Experience appeared first on Just Jared – Celebrity News and Gossip | Entertainment.
