Hayden Panettiere spoke out about her ‘weird friendship’ with RHOBH’s Diana Jenkins in book
She was just 19 whilst Diana was almost 50
Hayden Panettiere spoke out about her “weird friendship” with RHOBH’s Diana Jenkins just months before her tragic death age just 36. Their friendship was brought back into light following the release of Hayden’s memoir in May of this year, after Diana was forced to deny rumours surrounding her and Hayden.
The former RHOBH cast member was forced to deny claims that she was the friend who had put a teenage Hayden Panettiere into bed with an “undressed man who was very famous.” Hayden made the claims in her memoir, claiming that an unnamed friend had betrayed her as a teenager by putting her into that situation with the man.
Hayden later explained that there was a reason she’d decided not to publicly name the person who put her into bed with the man, telling The Hollywood Reporter: “It was a bad look for them and [the people I didn’t name] were generally people within my industry. They’re people I could run into again. I didn’t want to put myself in that position. Things happened a long time ago, but it was to protect me and my company from being sued by some very pissed-off famous people.”
As a result of the friend not being named, rumours immediately started circulating about who it could be, with people baselessly speculating it was Diana Jenkins.
Diana and Hayden first met when she was just 19, with Diana being almost 50, with her recalling in her memoir: “Diana was almost thirty years older than me, and while I’d always been mature for my age, it’s impossible to overlook an age difference that large. It was a weird friendship for sure, but as I stretched into my newfound adulthood, I had to see which relationships suited me, on my own terms. At that moment, Diana seemed like she could give me everything I needed.”
This isn’t the first time Diana has had to deny false rumours about her, as she’s dealt with speculation for over a decade that she once ran a “secret call girl ring.”
The rumours all started as a result of her book, Room 23, which Diana published in 2009 and featured provocative pictures of Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Bynes, George Clooney and Hayden Panettiere, who was 20 years old at the time.
The rumours then resurfaced again when Diana joined RHOBH, with her saying in a confessional that the claims her book was “a catalogue of clients and call girls” had been “an offense of my character.” She also sued the blogger who had falsely claimed she was a “sex trafficker.”
The RHOBH star clarified at the time she was in no way linked to what happened to Hayden Panettiere, with a rep for Diana Jenkins telling TMZ at the time: “Diana has had to deal with false online rumors before, and sadly this is just another example of that. So let me be 100 per cent clear about this: It most certainly is not Diana, and anyone who claims it is her will be sued.”
During the book, Hayden recalled that she was “led by somebody that I had grown to trust and see as a protector” down a set of stairs and into a small room. “She physically put me in the bed next to this undressed man who was very famous. My hair stood on end, and I became ferocious. I was like, ‘This is not happening.’”
She continued: “I had nowhere to hide. I bolted, and I hid wherever I could think of to hide on a boat. There was no jumping off and swimming away…and I realized that there was nobody who was going to be empathetic to my situation — that this was nothing new to them.”
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