Hayden Panettiere’s mother, Lesley Vogel, and her on-and-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson will not attend a celebration of life being held for the late actress this weekend, according to TMZ.
Sources close to the family say Hickerson and his brother, Zach, were not invited, nor was Vogel.
The memorial is set to take place Saturday at a church in Malibu, with roughly 150 guests expected, including Panettiere’s father, Skip, along with close friends and industry figures.
Sources say the coastal setting was chosen deliberately, since Panettiere loved the ocean and whales, and that the gathering is meant to focus on celebrating her legacy rather than the struggles of her final years.
Panettiere’s relationship with her mother had grown deeply strained in recent years, in one of her final interviews, a May appearance on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, she said plainly, “There is not a relationship between her and I, sadly.”
In her memoir, she described her mother behaving more like “a boss” than a parent, recalling being told “you owe me” after firing her as her manager.
Panettiere was found unresponsive on August 16 inside a South Carolina Airbnb, with Hickerson and his brother having made the 911 call.
TMZreported on September 14 that law enforcement believes she died after taking a fentanyl-laced oxycodone pill, her official cause of death has not yet been confirmed, though an autopsy found no signs of trauma.
Investigators have reportedly been reviewing years of messages between Panettiere and an alleged drug dealer as part of the ongoing inquiry, and the DEA has searched her Los Angeles home.
2026-09-19 01:25:00
