Neutrogena admits making Hayden Panettiere feel ‘unsupported’ after her claims spark boycott calls

The recent death of Hayden Panettiere, the American child actress-turned-television and movie star, has drawn fresh attention to her partnership with American skincare brand Neutrogena, which she worked with for about a decade.

The 36-year-old wrote in her 2026 memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning, and said in a podcast interview with Jay Shetty just a few months before she died on Aug 16, that the company let her contract expire after she publicly admitted to struggling with postpartum depression in 2015 – a move that she said shocked her.

Panettiere also said she turned to alcohol and opioids to self-medicate during this period.

Her claim on the podcast that Neutrogena dropped her at a vulnerable moment – a clip of which was shared widely on social media – started a broad conversation about the stigma still attached to a mental health issue that affects an estimated 10 per cent to 15 per cent of women who give birth in the United States.

Social media users called for a boycott of the brand, which created pressure for it to respond.

On Aug 20, Neutrogena posted a statement on social media saying: “We are proud to have partnered with her and understand that we made her feel unsupported. This is not what Neutrogena stands for nor who we want to be.”

The company did not respond to a request for an interview.

The conversation might have struck a nerve, said Michelle Battersby, president of Peanut, a social media app for mothers, because many mothers can relate to the experience of struggling emotionally in the months and years after giving birth.

Based on what Panettiere has shared in interviews and her memoir, she “had asked for help over and over and over, and she was failed over and over and over”, Battersby said, adding: “Can we be surprised when women then don’t speak about their postpartum suffering or their mental health?”

In her memoir and the podcast interview, Panettiere shared the details of her experience after giving birth to her daughter Kaya in 2014.

“I had my daughter and I knew something was just terribly, terribly wrong,” Panettiere said. “I wasn’t connecting with her the way that I knew I should be.”

Panettiere went into treatment for depression in 2015 when Kaya was four months old. “I left clean and sober,” she writes in her memoir, “but there seemed to be no solution to my postpartum depression.”

At the time, she was filming the drama series Nashville (2012 to 2018), in which her character, country pop singer Juliette Barnes, also became pregnant and dealt with postpartum depression and substance abuse. Panettiere told Shetty that reliving these experiences on-screen was traumatising and disorienting.

She entered treatment again in 2016, parted ways with Neutrogena and, in 2018, lost custody of her daughter. Kaya now lives with her father, Ukrainian former professional heavyweight boxer Wladimir Klitschko.

“The problem wasn’t about what is or isn’t wrong in my life,” Panettiere wrote in her memoir. “The issue was that I had everything I’d ever wanted – a great job, a baby, friends, a fiance – and yet, I was still unhappy. I had postpartum depression, and it sucked. I wanted more than anything to get back to that place of happiness.” NYTIMES