James Blunt has addressed rumours that he was the “very famous” man the late Hayden Panettiere wrote about being left in her bed aged 18.
Following the passing of the Heroes star, who died aged 36 on 16 August, there has been renewed interest in Panettiere’s recent memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning and the many shocking stories she told in it.
Memoir account
In one portion of the book, Panettiere wrote about a trusted friend coaxing her to go downstairs in a yacht cabin, where they found “a famous thirty-something British singer-songwriter lying in a bed”, who was “undressed”.
After fans began to speculate online that Blunt was the man in question, the “You’re Beautiful” singer, 52, responded on Monday by sharing a Substack post to X titled: “Hayden Panettiere and James Blunt – An Internet Lynching” that “debunked” the rumours.
Rumours debunked
In the piece, journalist Dean Piper writes about a story he penned in 2009 about Panettiere and Blunt being “flirty” at the amfAR charity event in Cannes and being photographed on a boat together the next day.
“It only takes the smallest of AI searches to find out that in May 2009, when the pictures of Blunt and Panettiere were taken, she was 19, almost 20. So, if the incident happened when she was 18, Blunt’s not your guy to start with,” Piper wrote.
“And as she says she hadn’t met the man before the incident, and that she fled the boat immediately after, it takes nothing to work out that the cabin incident was the first and last time she met the man.
“So, pictures of Blunt and Panettiere at the amfAR charity event and together on the boat again the next day mean only one thing – he’s really not your man.”
Blunt reshared Piper’s story in seeming agreement on X, adding an emoji of two eyes looking to the side. The Standard has contacted Blunt’s representatives for further comment.
Book details
In her book, Panettiere claimed that the friend had told her the man in question had a “huge d***” and told her to get into bed with him.
“He was shirtless and propped up on a few pillows with his arms positioned behind his head. From the waist down, he was covered by bedsheets, and I could see the outline of his body underneath,” she wrote.
“I could feel my heart pounding, as I settled in underneath the sheets, I disassociated. My body no longer felt like my own. The shock was so great it didn’t even occur to me to say no.”
Once the friend left, Panettiere says that she told the singer “this is not going to happen”, fled the room and left the boat.
Discussing the “horrifying” incident in her final interview before her death, Panettiere told podcaster Jay Shetty: “There was no jumping off and swimming away... I realised that there was nobody who was going to be empathetic to my situation, that this was nothing new to them.”
