Hayden Panettiere, who has worked in both film and television, recently reflected on her relationship with her former boyfriend Brian Hickerson during an exclusive interview for Us Weekly‘s new cover story.
After being in an abusive relationship and facing domestic violence not once, but twice, the 36-year-old Hayden Panettiere, who began dating Hickerson in 2018, finally split with him in 2022. Brian Hickerson, who, as cited by Style, according to his LinkedIn profile, is a real estate agent and an actor, was also arrested for physically abusing the Amber Alert actress and has also served over a month in jail.
However, during Hayden Panettiere’s interview with Us Weekly for the cover story, while talking about her relationship with Hickerson, she said:
“It’s a very embarrassing subject. I’ve always seen myself as such a resilient and strong woman, that the idea that I could allow something like this to happen to me, it blew my mind.”
She went ahead and added:
“It blew the minds of the people that knew me best. They, still to this day, can’t believe that I would ever allow that to happen to me.”
Hayden Panettiere continued and talked about how, at the time, she did not reveal her experience with Hickerson to her family members and said:
“That whole experience, I kept as much of it to myself as possible because I didn’t want to drag anybody that I loved emotionally into such an upsetting situation. I knew that they would want to protect me and would do anything to make sure that I was safe, and I wanted to keep them safe, and … emotionally safe.”
She continued and added:
“It was humiliating. It was embarrassing, so I didn’t want anyone to know. I wanted people to know as little as possible.”
As she mentioned her breakup with Hickerson, Panettiere said:
“Getting an abusive person out of your life is like trying to rip a weed out that is so entangled into your life. Every time you pull it out, another weed pops back up and you’re like, ‘I thought I killed this.’ They always manage to find a way to slither back into your life, even if you’re an incredibly strong-willed person”
Hayden Panettiere opens up about her past relationship in her new memoir
Hayden Panettiere, who recently broke the news about being bisexual, also mentioned her abusive relationship with Brian Hickerson in her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning. As cited by Us Weekly, regarding her relationship with Hickerson, she wrote in the book:
“It was brutal, it was traumatic, it was emotional. It was so important for me to word that experience properly. It felt like I had finally found the words to describe it properly. It was such a powerful moment for me, getting that off my chest.”
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Edited by Koustav Mandal