Hayden Panettiere’s director says she was ‘fighting to stay sober’ and details ‘dark energy’ when boyfriend was around

Hayden Panettiere sadly passed away at the age of 36 on August 16.

When the star was discovered “unresponsive,” she underwent “advanced life support” and the professionals from the scene mentioned both “overdose” as well as “cardiac arrest,” per a dispatch audio, which was obtained by People.

The actress’ director of A Breed Apart, Griff Furst, transparently shared the red flags he witnessed during Hayden’s time on his set in a recent video on social media.

Griff reveals Hayden’s struggles

He revealed: “Hayden started acting when she was 11 months old so I was rooting for Hayden to beat the addiction that she spoke about openly and publicly herself and in her memoir.”

The filmmaker admitted that his intuition told him that something was off about her situation, as he explained: “Producer or director – no matter how certain you are that an actor or a crew member is in a bad situation, you don’t have the proof or the benefit of the time to verify it — you can adjust the schedule, you can collect internal reporting, [and] you can assign a handler to make sure that the individual is being taken care of as best as they can…”

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After their shoot concluded he maintained contact with the entertainer and her team came up with a plan that unfortunately never took place.

He shared: “When we wrapped however, I stayed in touch with her team and what eventually got determined was that she might need an intervention and I was asked to participate and I said yes and that intervention did not happen, at least not that I’m aware of. And I wasn’t leading the charge on it – it wouldn’t have been appropriate for me.”

Griff added: “I will say [it] is my opinion and it’s only about what I saw on my own set – somebody fighting to stay sober who deserved better company around them than what I observed.”

The director revealed that even when troublesome things did get documented on set, sadly, they are simply swept under the rug.

He expressed: “Hollywood has an extremely sad history of stars not getting the help that they deserve and our business has no fix for that, so for observations, they just get written down, and thrown into a production report, and then a year later, you’re just reading the news.”

Griff further explained that there’s a bigger problem at large happening in the entertainment industry and he’s seen it occur across generations of young stars.

He continued: “When I think about this, it’s not just the Hayden story, because I grew up on movie sets and I know a whole lot of child actors very well and I understand what it does to somebody to be put in front of a camera before they’re old enough to consent.”

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Griff emphasizes the toxic behavior of Hayden’s on-again, off-again boyfriend

Griff’s recent video wasn’t the only one that the director put out regarding Hayden and what he saw take place firsthand.

He also spoke candidly of Hayden’s very strained relationship with her on-against, off-again partner, Brian Hickerson in a clip shared on Monday.

Griff shared: “I’m on set, and I get word from the movie’s security team who picked her up from the airport that something was off. I didn’t think much about it, and so I left set, and I walked over to greet her and her boyfriend Brian.”

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He recalled: “He opened the door. Hayden was incredibly sweet and gracious and excited to work, but she was not okay. I’m not going to get into the details of why that was, but having worked on over 100 movies and seeing just about everything, it was pretty clear that she wasn’t okay and the energy in her room was pretty dark.”

In Griff’s most recent video, the filmmaker also emphasized the concerning toxic relationship behavior surrounding Brian.

He expressed: ‘I can also say that what’s true is what’s public record – you can look it up yourself. Cause in 2021, he pleaded no contest to felony, counts of injuring a spouse, which was Hayden, and there were other accounts that were dismissed, and he served time in jail, and he was on probation, and then she had a restraining order against him the year before and then three days before she died, a judge denied his motion to have the felony convictions reduced.”

Griff concluded: “Hayden’s mom Lesley [Vogel] said that there was someone they had been trying to get out of her life for a long time and that he was with her the day that she died.”