Hayden Panettiere allegedly found herself in bed with an “undressed” and “very famous” man when she was just 18 years old.
The actress recounted the “shocking” encounter — which she details in her upcoming memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning” — during her appearance on Monday’s episode of the “On Purpose with Jay Shetty” podcast.
Panettiere, now 36, recalled believing she was having a fun night out on a boat with friends when she was taken “by surprise” and felt “in danger.”
The “Heroes” star claimed she was “led by somebody that I had grown to trust and see as a protector and somebody who had my back” down the stairs into a “very small” room.
“She physically put me in the bed next to this undressed man who was very famous,” she remembered, adding that the man — whom she didn’t name — acted “like this was just an average day for him and this is something that happens all the time.”
Panettiere said she went into survival mode and tapped into “that lion in me, that fire in me.”
“My hair stood on end and I became ferocious,” she noted. “I was like, ‘This is not happening.’”
Despite her instincts kicking in, Panettiere said she was “quite literally out to sea” and the best she could do was to escape the room and hide somewhere on the boat.
“There was no jumping off and swimming away,” she explained. “And I realized that there was nobody who was going to be empathetic to my situation, that this was nothing new to them.”
Though the “Nashville” actress believed she was “oh-so-mature” enough at the time after having lived “such a huge life,” she now realizes this wasn’t the case.
“So even though I felt like I could make healthy decisions and safe decisions, I wasn’t capable of being fully aware of what was going on around me,” she said.
Panettiere has been on a press run leading up to the release of “This Is Me: A Reckoning” on May 19 and recently made headlines for coming out as bisexual.
In an interview with Us Weekly, she detailed the “scary” experience of dating women while avoiding the paparazzi and how she “didn’t have the courage to throw [herself] fully emotionally into it” because she didn’t want to hide that part of herself.
While Panettiere noted that it’s “better late than never” to come out, her estranged mother, Lesley Vogel, told the Daily Mail it was “interesting timing” for her daughter to share the news now.
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