HAYDEN LOSES HER DAUGHTER
Hayden Panettiere has a messy night out as her ex raises their child 6,300 miles away
Hayden Panettiere’s blond hair was pulled back in a messy bun as she hunched over a railing outside Gladstones seafood restaurant in Malibu and threw up. “She was barefoot and wasted,” a restaurant staffer tells In Touch of the Nashville star, who reportedly downed Long Island iced teas with her new beau, aspiring actor Brian Hickerson, 29, during a wild night out on Aug. 2. “They carried her out. She was a mess.”
So is her life. The next day, sources confirmed that Hayden, 28, and her fiancé of five years, world heavyweight champion boxer Wladimir Klitschko, 42, had quietly split after nine years as a couple — and that the athlete is raising their 3-year-old daughter, Kaya. “[Kaya] lives with Wlad. Wlad lives in Ukraine. Her home base is in Ukraine,” Hayden’s mother, Lesley Vogel, tells In Touch, adding that the retired boxer’s mother helps care for her granddaughter. “She’s in good hands.” Hayden, who went to rehab for postpartum depression issues in 2015 and 2016, “comes and goes to Europe to visit Kaya,” adds Lesley. “I don’t know when she’s going back. I think she’s taking a break right now so she can decide what she wants to do. In [ her] career, and in life as well.”
A DIFFICULT TIME
With Nashville canceled, her engagement off and her young daughter more than 6,300 miles away, Hayden is at a crossroads. “Her relationship with Wlad and Kaya remains very complicated,” a source who’s worked with her tells In Touch. “As far as I know, Hayden is still working on her recovery, and that is ultimately why she and Wlad split.” (Hayden’s mom will only say of the breakup, “Sometimes people
are in a relationship and they have to be apart.”) Hayden’s recent behavior has raised red flags. “It’s not healthy. She was working so hard on herself, so this is like a backslide,” the source says of her antics on Aug. 2, when Hayden also was photographed with Brian in the parking lot at another LA restaurant, Craig’s. “It’s very unusual that she was drinking. Her objective has certainly been to live as sober as possible,” says her “surprised and concerned” mom. “When you have postpartum depression, they put [ you] on different medications; it’s a process,” she adds, explaining that Hayden is now instead “trying some sort of high-potency vitamin substance that basically weans you [off the meds].” Hayden has been doing well, Lesley insists: “I’ve seen her happier and more lighthearted than she has been in a very long time.” Hayden could be trying to make up for lost time. “When she was with Wlad, they lived a pretty quiet life, and that seemed to be working for her, but she also kind of felt trapped, that she was too young to be a full-time mom and partner,” says the source. “She loved being a mom but was unhappy with her life in a lot of ways.” Lesley believes Hayden is still figuring things out. “You have to make a choice, and Hayden has to decide how much time she’s going to spend in Europe [with Kaya and Wlad] versus the U.S.,” she says. “She has got a lot of evolutions in her life and choices to make, but they’re coming from a good place.” ◼