Hayden Panettiere is opening up about the abuse she says she endured in her relationship with Brian Hickerson, calling it “very embarrassing” as she prepares to publish her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, on Tuesday, May 19.
The 36-year-old actor said the idea that she could allow something like that to happen “blew my mind,” a reaction that underscores how far the relationship strayed from the image she had of herself. Panettiere was first linked romantically to Hickerson in 2018.
Hickerson was arrested in 2019 after an alleged domestic violence incident with Panettiere and charged with felony domestic violence. He was ordered to stay away from her, though those charges were later dropped. He was arrested again in 2020 following another domestic violence altercation, then served 33 days in prison, was placed on four years probation and ordered to pay a $500 fine.
Panettiere said she kept as much of the experience to herself as possible because she did not want to drag the people she loved into the fallout. She said she did not want her parents or her brother Jansen emotionally involved, and wanted to keep them safe.
That reluctance made the relationship harder to escape, she said. Panettiere described getting an abusive person out of your life as like trying to rip out a weed so entangled in everything around it that another one keeps coming back. She said she struggled for a long time to fully end the relationship, and that she and Hickerson broke up for good after his second arrest.
Writing about the abuse for the memoir, Panettiere said, was “brutal,” “traumatic” and “emotional.” She said rereading a journal entry from the time of the alleged incident helped her find the words to describe it properly, and called putting it on the page “a powerful moment” that finally let her get it off her chest.
