James Blunt officially denies rumours that he’s the man in Hayden Panettiere’s yacht story
Hayden claimed she was 'put into bed' with an 'undressed man' as a teenager
James Blunt has spoken out and denied that he’s the “very famous undressed man” in Hayden Panettiere’s harrowing yacht story.
James Blunt posted a link on X yesterday to a Substack article by a journalist named Dean Piper. He captioned it, “👀,” and included the link, which investigates whether James was the one in Hayden’s yacht story.
In the article titled “Hayden Panettiere and James Blunt – An Internet Lynching,” Dean comes to the conclusion that no, it was not James on the boat.
— James Blunt (@JamesBlunt) August 24, 2026
“Guys, it only takes the smallest of AI searches to find out that in May 2009, when the pictures of Blunt and Panettiere were taken, she was 19, almost 20,” Dean writes. “So, if the incident happened when she was 18, Blunt’s not your guy to start with.”
Dean also says that Hayden claimed that she hadn’t met the man before the incident which isn’t in line with Hayden and James’ relationship: “And as she says she hadn’t met the man before the incident, and that she fled the boat immediately after, it takes nothing to work out that the cabin incident was the first and last time she met the man. So, pictures of Blunt and Panettiere at the amfAR charity event (above) and together on the boat again the next day (below) mean only one thing – he’s really not your man.”
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During her appearance on the Jay Shetty podcast, Hayden claimed she was on a boat with friends when she was “led by somebody that I had grown to trust and see as a protector and somebody who had my back” down the stairs into a “very small” room.
“She physically put me in the bed next to this undressed man who was very famous,” she remembered of the incident, adding that for the unnamed male celebrity “[it was] like this was just an average day for him and this is something that happens all the time.”
Hayden said she went into survival mode and pulled out “that lion in me, that fire in me.” She added: “My hair stood on end, and I became ferocious,” she noted. “I was like, ‘This is not happening.’” As they were on a boat out on the water, she was trapped with the woman.
Because of Hayden’s former friendship with Diana, there were baseless rumours that she was the woman on the boat, and that the man on it was James Blunt, which was also speculation. The memoir later provided more detail about the woman involved, calling her Stella.
Diana has already been denying the rumours for years. “Diana has had to deal with false online rumours before, and sadly this is just another example of that,” Jenkins’ spokesperson told TMZ Wednesday. “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.”
Now James and Diana have officially spoken out against these baseless rumours and have said that they’re not the ones Hayden was speaking about in her yacht story.
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