Hayden Panettiere once wrote that starring on “Nashville” and reading the show’s script was like “looking in a funhouse mirror.”
In her 2026 memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” published three months before her August 16 death, Panettiere wrote that it felt like her “personal problems were writing the script,” particularly during the show’s fourth season, which aired from 2015 to 2016.
After publicly disclosing that she was entering a treatment facility for her postpartum depression and addiction issues in 2015, her character on “Nashville,” country star Juliette Barnes, experienced similar challenges.
At the time, the actor had also been open about her strained relationship with her mother and about being on the verge of splitting with her then-fiancé, Wladimir Klitschko. The two, who share an 11-year-old daughter, eventually split in August 2018.
Mark Levine/Disney General Entertainment Content/Getty Images
“Juliette Barnes had postpartum depression, an alcohol and pill problem, and a divorce on the horizon. She was erratic, an absentee mother, and fought with everyone — including her fans,” Panettiere, who played Barnes on the show’s six seasons from 2012 to 2018, wrote.
“Every time I read the day’s script, it was like I was looking in a funhouse mirror, seeing a distorted version of myself. I can’t tell you how lost this made me feel,” she continued. “I didn’t fall into another world that was distinct from my own. I dove headfirst into my own hell.”
Panettiere added that she was suffering from “debilitating anxiety and an addiction I couldn’t shake,” and then had to live through it twice: “First at home as Hayden, and then in front of millions, as Juliette.”
“Something had to give, and I was afraid it was going to be me,” she continued in the book.
Mark Levine/Disney General Entertainment Content/Getty Images
Business Insider reached out to ABC and didn’t immediately hear back.
Panettiere didn’t always feel this way while starring on the series. In 2014, she said it was a “blessing” to play the character and when speaking about “Nashville,” praised “the brilliance of the writing.” She also applauded the show’s writers for creating a character the viewers could root for.
She told TV Line that year that “as forward as Juliette has been and as many times as she’s fallen on her face, there’s always something else to learn about her, to understand about her.”
Panettiere entered a rehab facility during production of Nashville’s fourth season in 2015 and was temporarily written out of the show — so Juliette went to rehab, too. “Nashville” ended after six seasons, three years later, but Panettiere wrote in her memoir that she was ready to be done with the show, even choosing not to attend its wrap party. The writers gave Juliette a happy ending in the series finale, reunited with her daughter and her love interest, Avery (Will Chase).
“When I’d received my invitation, I politely declined. I just couldn’t pretend that this chapter of my life was something to memorialize,” she wrote.
Three months after publishing her memoir, Panettiere was found dead in an apartment complex in Greenville, South Carolina. She was 36.
After news of her death broke, some of her “Nashville” cast members posted tributes, including costar Connie Britton, who called her “bursting with brilliance, shining so bright.”
