Griff Furst, who directed one of Hayden Panettiere’s final films before her shocking death Sunday at 36, said that her team had asked him to participate in an intervention after they filmed his 2025 movie, “A Breed Apart.”
“When I think about this, it’s not just a Hayden story. 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 grow up in front of a camera before they’re old enough to consent,” Furst said in a video posted to his Instagram account. “And 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 in her memoir.”
“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,” he said. “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. When we wrapped, however, I stayed in touch with her team. What eventually got determined was that she might need an intervention and I got asked to participate. 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.”
Panettiere’s death is under investigation, but police said there were “not any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances” when they discovered her unresponsive at an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina. The DEA has joined the investigation, and People reported that officials could be heard discussing an “overdose” and “cardiac arrest” on the dispatch audio. An official cause of death will be given following an autopsy.
“What I will say is my opinion, and it’s about what I saw on my own set: Somebody fighting to stay sober and who deserved better company around them than what I observed,” Furst added. “Hollywood has an extremely sad history of stars not getting the help that they deserve. Our business has no fix for that, so our observations get written down and thrown into a production report. Then a year later, you’re just reading the news. I was very lucky to work with Hayden. I wish she was still here.”