Ruby Rose has opened up about the loss of her “best friend” Hayden Panettiere.
Panettiere, famous for her roles in Heroes, Nashville, and the Scream franchise, died in her home in South Carolina on August 16, at the age of 36. Her death was announced by her father Skip, who described her as “an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her”.
Orange Is the New Blackactor Rose has now paid a tearful tribute to Panettiere when recently asked how she hopes Panettiere is remembered. Speaking during the premiere of Fox’s Special Forces, she told Entertainment Tonight: “That was my best friend. We spoke everyday for five years.”
Rose said she “didn’t even think” they were going to be friends, saying: “I didn’t know if I wanted to have any celebrity friends, ‘cause I haven’t had a great experience with the industry.” However, they quickly hit it off.
“I saw her, she saw me, and I just remember thinking, ‘Oh, no.’ And then she ran up anyway and was like, ‘Hey, I’m Hayden. Can we go talk somewhere? We’ve got a lot in common.’ And I just laughed. I was like, ‘What?’” Rose recalled.
“She says I said, ‘I don’t think so,’ but I think I just laughed. And then we went and talked, and we had everything in common.” Rose added that they shared “five years of friendship, of texting everyday and checking in on each other”.
“Hayden, all that she ever wanted was to have her story told her way, on her terms,” Rose added, while standing alongside Collin Gosselin, the son of Jon & Kate Plus 8‘s Jon and Kate Gosselin, for the interview.
“She really wanted to have an experience like Collin and I are having at the moment,” she said, while Gosselin added, “And she deserved it.”
“I can’t voice against it enough when parents don’t look out for their children in this world,” he said. Panettiere, much like Gosselin, had been open about her turbulent relationship with her mother, Lesley Vogel.
In her May memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, Panettiere wrote about her strained relationship with Vogel, later telling The Hollywood Reporter that she realised “even more so how much of a toll it took on me” after writing it.
She also spoke in the book about the pressure she felt coming up as a child star. “I was groomed. I was like a little soldier and I always have been,” Panettiere said of her experience. “No was never an option. It was just: Here are your scenes, here’s your dialogue, memorise it, hit the marks, do what your director tells you to do.
“I took my marching orders.”
Tributes have poured in from the entertainment industry since Hayden Panettiere’s passing, with Heroes co-star Sendhil Ramamurthy recalling how she supported “mistreated” background actors and “knew every crew member’s name”.
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