Ruby Rose is opening up about her friendship with Hayden Panettiere.
Panettiere, the Heroes and Nashville actress, died on Aug. 16 at 36 years old.
The Orange Is the New Black star got choked up when asked by Entertainment Tonight how she hopes Panettiere is remembered during the premiere of Fox’s Special Forces.
“That was my best friend,” she said of Panettiere. “We spoke everyday for five years.”
Rose said she “didn’t even think we were gonna be friends. I didn’t know if I wanted to have any celebrity friends, ‘cause I haven’t had a great experience with the industry.” However, they quickly hit it off.
“I saw her, she saw me, and I just remember thinking, ‘Oh, no.’ And then she ran up anyway and was like, ‘Hey, I’m Hayden. Can we go talk somewhere? We’ve got a lot in common.’ And I just laughed. I was like, ‘What?’” Rose recalled. “She says I said, ‘I don’t think so,’ but I think I just laughed. And then we went and talked, and we had everything in common.”
Rose said they shared “five years of friendship, of texting everyday and checking in on each other.”
“Hayden, all that she ever wanted was to have her story told her way, on her terms,” Rose added, while standing alongside Collin Gosselin, the son of Jon & Kate Plus 8‘s Jon and Kate Gosselin, for the interview.
“She really wanted to have an experience like Collin and I are having at the moment,” she said, while Gosselin added, “And she deserved it.”
“I can’t voice against it enough when when parents don’t look out for their children in this world,” he said. Panettiere, like Gosselin, had been open about alleged mistreatment from her mother.
In her May memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, Panettiere wrote about her strained relationship with her mom, Lesley Vogel. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Panettiere said “Having to touch on everything about my relationship with my mother, that was one of the harder things to talk about. While writing it, I realized even more so how much of a toll it took on me.”
She also spoke about the pressure she felt as a child star. “I was groomed. I was like a little soldier and I always have been,” Panettiere said. “No was never an option. It was just: Here are your scenes, here’s your dialogue, memorize it, hit the marks, do what your director tells you to do. I took my marching orders.”
Panettiere was found unresponsive in a Greenville, South Carolina, Airbnb with her on-off boyfriend, Brian Hickerson. Preliminary results of the autopsy indicated no signs of trauma were found on her body. An investigation is ongoing by both local and federal authorities into the circumstances around her death.
