The Hayden Panettiere Neutrogena contract dispute has resurfaced sharply following Panettiere’s death, with fans calling for a boycott of the beauty brand after her claims that it dropped her for speaking openly about postpartum depression (PPD).
Panettiere died on 17 August. According to ABC News, she was in cardiac arrest when authorities arrived at a residence in South Carolina. The Greenville City Police Department is investigating her death and has been assisted by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
A Decade-Long Partnership That Ended Badly
Panettiere began working with Neutrogena in the mid-2000s, while she was still a teenager. She continued as an ambassador for the brand until 2015, a relationship spanning roughly a decade.
Earlier this year, she claimed that her contract was severed after she spoke out about her experience with PPD. She had entered a treatment facility for postpartum depression in the months following the birth of her daughter, Kaya, in 2014.
‘There’s a lot of misunderstanding,’ Panettiere said about the diagnosis during a 2015 appearance on Live! With Kelly and Michael. ‘There’s a lot of people out there that think that it’s not real, that it’s not true, that it’s something that’s made up in their minds, that, “Oh, it’s hormones.” They brush it off. It’s something that’s completely uncontrollable. It’s really painful and it’s really scary and women need a lot of support.’
What Panettiere Said About the Hayden Panettiere Neutrogena Split
During a May episode of On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Panettiere gave her most direct account of the situation. ‘Neutrogena was a huge part of my life,’ she said. ‘I had the morals clause. They caught absolutely everything and of all the things that they would fire me over, this is the last thing that I thought they would ever fire me over.’
She said she had not planned to make a public statement about PPD, but was ‘just being honest’ and had not anticipated a negative reaction. ‘And so when I got that call that Neutrogena wanted to fire me over that, and my representative at the time said, “That’s illegal you can’t do that,” I knew that that was gonna be it,’ she continued, ‘that I was not gonna be invited back the next year and I had worked with those people for 10 years.’
She also claimed that no one from the company contacted her afterwards. ‘I remember that really breaking my heart,’ she said.
Neutrogena’s Response
On 20 August, Neutrogena posted a statement on Instagram. ‘We are deeply saddened by Hayden Panettiere’s passing,’ it read. ‘For more than a decade, Hayden was a valued member of our Neutrogena community. We are proud to have partnered with her and understand that we made her feel unsupported during a very difficult time. This is not what Neutrogena stands for or who we want to be.’
The company said it will make a ‘significant investment to a long-standing community health partner to help give more women access to the support they need, including care for postpartum depression.’ Details of that investment are to be shared at a later date. The statement closed with condolences for ‘Hayden’s family and all who loved her.’
The Hayden Panettiere Neutrogena row had stayed largely out of the mainstream since her podcast appearance in May. Her death brought it back into sharp focus, with fans on Reddit circulating her original comments and calling for a boycott of the brand. Panettiere had also spoken publicly about other personal struggles, including addiction, and published a memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, which came out in May.
Neutrogena’s stated investment in postpartum depression care is the company’s first concrete public response to Panettiere’s claims, though specific figures and partner details remain to be confirmed.