Hayden Panettiere was 16 years old when she walked onto the set of Heroes and introduced herself to her on-screen father by shouting his name and throwing her arms around him.
That moment stayed with Jack Coleman for 20 years.
In a tribute posted to social media following Panettiere's death this past Sunday, Coleman remembered his co-star with grief and something sharper. "I'm heartbroken. I couldn't begin to put my thoughts into words until now, and they will be inadequate. I've loved Hayden since day one of the pilot of Heroes, 20 years ago, when she introduced herself by shouting 'daddy' and throwing her arms around me. From that day on, she called me daddio. She was Haydini, because she was a magician," he wrote, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Coleman, who played Noah Bennet on the NBC drama while Panettiere played his daughter Claire, described watching her work during an early scene. "During an early scene, a tear rolled down her cheek on the same line, take after take. I marveled at her technique. 'It's not technique,' she corrected me. 'I'm not a trained seal. I feel it and the tears just happen to come at that moment.' She was 16."
He went on to describe the scrutiny she faced as a teenager at the height of the show's popularity. By 17, she ranked number one on IMDB Pro. "She was routinely asked obnoxious questions, mostly some version of 'when are you going to go off the rails?' Today, we'd recognize those questions for the misogynistic provocations they were. She was hunted. Everywhere she went, there were photographers with 300 millimeter lenses — the kind that can make even the most innocent activity look sinister," Coleman wrote.
Despite that, he said she never let it darken her presence on set. "She brought joy to the set and a photographic memory. Everyone was in awe of her ability to bring it every take. A tiny colossus who loved to laugh. We laughed a lot. That shining face, that megawatt smile, that wasn't just for the camera. That was her. She glowed."
Coleman said he is still processing her death and is "filled with sorrow and regret. And anger. But that's for another time. Right now I want to remember an extraordinary young woman who was blessed and cursed. She was vulnerable. She felt everything. It made her a remarkable actor and susceptible to the heartache and thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to."
Panettiere was found unresponsive and in cardiac arrest at a South Carolina residence. An autopsy found no signs of trauma. The official cause and manner of death remain under investigation.
While Coleman's tribute focused on his love for her, the days after her death also brought public criticism of her mother, Lesley Vogel. Gayle King, co-anchor of CBS Mornings, addressed Vogel's comments on Wednesday's broadcast. Vogel, who was long estranged from her daughter after Panettiere dropped her as her manager at age 19, gave an interview to NBC News in which she blamed Panettiere's on-again, off-again boyfriend Brian Hickerson and said her daughter had gone down "the wrong path."
"This person in her life that we have been trying to get rid of for quite some time was with her at her death, and that was Brian Hickerson," Vogel said. "There is a lot of history in the past that Brian has enabled Hayden many times and this is why her father and I had been concerned for a long time about him."
King did not hold back. "You know, guys, you read this and all I can think is, 'Thanks, Mom, for nothing,'" she said, according to The Wrap. She called the statement "sad."
CBS Mornings co-anchor Vladimir Duthiers also weighed in, pointing to Panettiere's memoir published earlier this year, This Is Me: A Reckoning, in which she publicly discussed her mental health and addiction struggles. "Hayden Panettiere spent years publicly acknowledging her own failures, her own struggles," he said. "She did it with you in that interview. She cannot respond now, and for her mother to use these days after Hayden's death to just remind the world just how much trauma she caused, it's unseemly."
King reflected on what she called a complicated and apparently unresolved relationship between mother and daughter. "You hear stuff like that and you realize it was still very much in progress," she said, adding of Vogel's statement: "It makes me so sad that of the opportunity that you have after your daughter's death that that's what you choose to leave us with."
