Gayle King is looking back on her interview with Hayden Panettiere from earlier this year in the wake of her death at age 36.
Panettiere made an appearance on CBS Mornings in May to promote her tell-all memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning. It transpired to be one of the actor’s final interviews.
On Monday’s episode of CBS Mornings, King said news of her death Sunday is “so, so sad” and “heartbreaking.”
“It was hard when she was here that day,” King, 71, recalled of her interview. “When she was here in the studio that day, and I was talking to her off-camera, she was saying she felt that she was in a good place.”
However, the anchor noted: “She was still, clearly still struggling. To wake up to hear this news was really tough. She was so good. She would have turned 37 on Friday.”
During her May interview on CBS Mornings, Panettiere spoke about how her memoir explored her struggles with alcohol and opioid addiction, as well as her mental health, including postpartum depression and the grief she experienced after her younger brother died in 2023.
The Nashville star told King at the time that she was the “rawest version” of herself and still “overwhelmed by the subject matter” of the book.
The former child star went on to say that she was “still working on myself all the time” in therapy. She told King, “I’m better, healthier than I’ve been in a long time.”
At the time, she shared hopes of her memoir being able to “share with the world that they don’t have to be afraid... that they can be imperfect.”
Panettiere died Sunday at an apartment building in South Carolina after police were called to the scene for a woman in cardiac arrest.
Her cause of death has not yet been publicly identified.
Officials said no foul play is suspected, and that her friend called 911 in the afternoon.
“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden,” Panettiere’s father, Skip, confirmed in a statement to ABC News. “She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her — and to the millions who watched her onscreen.”
The Independent has reached out to police for comment as the investigation into her death continues.
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