“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 that, and it wouldn’t have been appropriate for me,” Furst said.
The director confides he watched Panettiere struggle to stay clean during filming and tried to support her efforts to “beat the addiction that she spoke about openly and publicly herself.” But he said there were limits to what he could do.
“A producer or director, no matter how certain you are that an actor or crew member is in a bad situation, you don’t have the proof, or the benefit of the time to verify it,” Furst explained. “You can adjust the schedule, you can collect internal reporting, and you can assign a handler to make sure that that individual is being taken care of as best as they can.”
Furst also seemingly takes a swipe at Panettiere’s on-off bad-boy beau, Brian Hickerson, 37, saying he witnessed “somebody fighting to stay sober and who deserved better company around them than what I observed.”