{"id":867419,"date":"2026-08-25T03:34:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T03:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/867419\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T03:34:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T03:34:16","slug":"hayden-panettiere-death-lesley-vogel-her-estranged-mum-hits-back-at-haters-and-brian-hickerson-in-good-morning-america-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/867419\/","title":{"rendered":"Hayden Panettiere death: Lesley Vogel, her estranged mum, hits back at haters and Brian Hickerson in Good Morning America interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lesley Vogel<\/a>, Hayden Panettiere<\/a>\u2019s estranged mother<\/a>, has hit out at the \u201chaters\u201d and backlash she has received in her first sit down interview since her daughter\u2019s tragic death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say to the haters out there: \u2018You don\u2019t have a right to tell me how I mourn the loss of my second child. That\u2019s my domain\u2019,\u201d Vogel, 70, told Good Morning America<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"NEW<\/p>\n

Actress Hayden Panettiere\u2019s estranged mother Lesley Vogel has hit back at the \u2018haters\u2019 in her first TV interview since her sudden death. \u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

The former soap actress sat down with journalist Rhiannon Ally to speak about Panettiere\u2019s sudden death at age 36<\/a> earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vogel said she was still processing her daughter\u2019s death and \u201cit will probably hit me later on\u201d.<\/p>\n

In an emotional moment, she said she went \u201cnumb\u201d and \u201ccouldn\u2019t feel anything\u201d when she got the call about the Heroes actress\u2019 death.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still am not grasping that this is real. It doesn\u2019t feel real; my mind tells me it\u2019s not at times. You know, it\u2019s going to be a process,\u201d she said, before she took a break to cry off camera.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vogel also slammed her late daughter\u2019s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brian Hickerson<\/a>, and claimed he was the reason they were estranged at the time of her death.<\/p>\n

Hickerson and Panettiere<\/a> were first linked in 2018, and their relationship was tumultuous for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vogel believes that Panettiere got close to Hickerson in that period, after she gave her ex-fiance Wladimir Klitschko full custody of their daughter<\/a>, who was four at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vogel confirmed that she was not speaking to her daughter during the final months of her life and recalled that over a year ago the Nashville star allegedly wanted to leave him for good.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cI still am not grasping that this is real. It doesn\u2019t feel real; my mind tells me it\u2019s not at times. You know, it\u2019s going to be a process.\u201d\u00a0Good Morning America<\/p>\n

\u201cShe knew that Brian was toxic,\u201d Vogel said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShe knew she had to get him out of her life.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Vogel claimed that Panettiere pulled away from her after six weeks, so she just went back to her home in Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vogel then got a call from the actress to let her know she was back with Hickerson.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got the phone call from her saying I\u2019m going to be with the person I love\u2026 I just lost it,\u201d Vogel shared.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI could not believe she had gone that far back, that he had been successful in reeling her back in with all the things he had done to her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Actress<\/p>\n

Vogel delivered an ultimatum to her daughter over her relationship with Hickerson a year before her death. \u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Vogel gave her daughter an ultimatum and told her that she couldn\u2019t be in her life if Hickerson was also in it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said she had expected the estrangement that followed to be a \u201cpocket of time\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Vogel never thought this would happen to her daughter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite the backlash Vogel has received online in the days since her daughter\u2019s death, she wants her to be remembered as, \u201cthe talented, you know, beautiful, outgoing, intelligent woman she really was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Hayden<\/p>\n

Panettiere died on August 16, her on-and-off-again boyfriend Hickerson was there with her at the time of her death. \u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Panettiere died on Sunday August 16, of an apparent overdose. <\/p>\n

Authorities have opened a \u201cdeath investigation\u201d to determine what really happened in the moments before the actress\u00a0died at a home in South Carolina.<\/p>\n

Multiple US news outlets including\u00a0TMZ<\/a>\u00a0are reporting that law enforcement sources began the investigation because \u201cHayden\u2019s death\u00a0was unexpected\u201d.<\/p>\n

Police will reportedly run their investigation alongside the coroner to determine the true cause and manner of the actress\u2019 death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Detectives are also trying to determine if there \u201ccould be criminal conduct\u201d behind her death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The National Alcohol and Other Drug hotline (1800 250 015) provides free and confidential advice about alcohol and other drugs, including available treatment options, and automatically directs the caller to the Alcohol and Drug Information Service in their state\/territory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lesley Vogel, Hayden Panettiere\u2019s estranged mother, has hit out at the \u201chaters\u201d and backlash she has received in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":867420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-867419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}