Ruby Rose broke down on camera when she was asked how Hayden Panettiere should be remembered, calling the late actress “my best friend” and saying they “spoke every day for five years.”
Rose said she hadn’t wanted celebrity friends at all when Panettiere walked up and introduced herself, and that they ended up with “everything in common.” The friendship became five years of texting every day and checking in on each other, she said, until Panettiere died on August 16, 2026, at 36, five days before her 37th birthday.
“Hayden, all that she ever wanted was to have her story told, her way, on her terms,” Rose said. Panettiere, who starred in Heroes, Nashville and Scream, had published her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning in May 2026, in which she said she was “groomed” as “a little soldier” and that “No was never an option.”
The clip surfaced from a Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test event, where Rose stood beside fellow recruit Collin Gosselin, the former Jon & Kate Plus 8 child.
It was Gosselin, not Rose, who added that Panettiere “deserved it.” Rose had just said Panettiere “really wanted to have an experience like Collin and I are having at the moment,” and Gosselin replied, “And she deserved it,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. He went on to say he couldn’t voice against it enough when parents don’t look out for their children.
The Greenville County Coroner later ruled Panettiere’s death an accident caused by a mix of drugs including fentanyl and alprazolam.
Rose has publicly pointed blame at Panettiere’s estranged mother. Writing on social media after the death, she told people to wait for all the information: “Don’t take it from her estranged mother. Or any of her abusers.” Her messages came after Panettiere’s mother, Lesley Vogel, released a widely criticized statement that said her daughter had “sadly lost her way” and blamed Panettiere’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, according to Nine.
