NASHVILLE - "It's Sure Gonna Hurt" - After nearly two decades, Rayna and Deacon face the facts of their storied and often tempestuous relationship. Scarlett makes a startling self-discovery in between tour dates while Gunnar performs with one of his idols, rock-music legend Sir Elton John, who guest stars as himself. Luke stops by "The View" to trumpet a worthy cause-before a family emergency pulls his focus. Elsewhere, Juliette struggles to make a connection, and Layla launches her album at The Bluebird. Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Raven Symon and Paula Faris guest star as themselves on "Nashville," WEDNESDAY, MAY 18 (10:00-11:00 p.m. EDT), on the Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images Television Network. (Photo by Mark Levine/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images) HAYDEN PANETTIERE
Hayden Panettiere, known to many of us as the cheerleader who couldn't be broken on Heroes and the country western star who came apart on Nashville, died this week in her South Carolina home at the age of 36. She left behind an eleven-year-old daughter called Kaya. Her cause of death is not yet known.
The public response to her death has followed a familiar refrain: the tragic trajectory of a child star whose bright light cast longer shadows. But Panettiere's story is also one of a young woman who fought hard to reclaim her narrative, and was willing to drag the darkest parts of it into the light, even when doing so made people uncomfortable.
Her 2026 memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, detailed a near-death labor and postpartum psychological spiral, an opioid and alcohol addiction that predated her daughter's birth by more than a decade, and the very difficult decision to give her daughter's father, former heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, full custody of their daughter in 2018. It was a story that gave a voice to a subject and a stigma that so many women have been unable to face openly for fear of shame, judgment and retribution. And perhaps that makes her sudden death all the more tragic, and opens up an important question that deserves to be confronted: what, exactly, do we mean when we say "good mother"?
381839 09: Actress Hayden Panettierre poses for photographers November 13, 2000 at the premiere of "102 Dalmatians" at Radio City Music Hall In New York City. (Photo by George DeSota/Newsmakers)
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Hayden Panettiere, known to many of us as the cheerleader who couldn't be broken on Heroes and the country western star who came apart on Nashville, died this week in her South Carolina home at the age of 36. She left behind an eleven-year-old daughter called Kaya. Her cause of death is not yet known.
The public response to her death has followed a familiar refrain: the tragic trajectory of a child star whose bright light cast longer shadows. But Panettiere's story is also one of a young woman who fought hard to reclaim her narrative, and was willing to drag the darkest parts of it into the light, even when doing so made people uncomfortable.
Her 2026 memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, detailed a near-death labor and postpartum psychological spiral, an opioid and alcohol addiction that predated her daughter's birth by more than a decade, and the very difficult decision to give her daughter's father, former heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, full custody of their daughter in 2018. It was a story that gave a voice to a subject and a stigma that so many women have been unable to face openly for fear of shame, judgment and retribution. And perhaps that makes her sudden death all the more tragic, and opens up an important question that deserves to be confronted: what, exactly, do we mean when we say "good mother"?
381839 09: Actress Hayden Panettierre poses for photographers November 13, 2000 at the premiere of "102 Dalmatians" at Radio City Music Hall In New York City. (Photo by George DeSota/Newsmakers)
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