Gayle King couldn’t hide her disappointment while reporting on the latest comments from Hayden Panettiere’s mother Lesley Vogel following the 36-year-old actress’ death.
“You know, guys, you read this and all I can think is, ‘Thanks, Mom, for nothing,’” King said of Vogel on Wednesday’s broadcast of “CBS Mornings,” adding that the commentary was “sad.”
Vogel, who was long estranged from her daughter after the actress dropped her as her management at age 19, gave an interview to NBC News on Tuesday in which she railed against Panettiere’s on again, off again boyfriend Brian Hickerson and bemoaned the fact her late daughter went down “the wrong path.”
“This person in her life that we have been trying to get rid of for quite some time was with her at her death, and that was Brian Hickerson,” Vogel said. “There is a lot of history in the past that Brian has enabled Hayden many times and this is why her father and I had been concerned for a long time about him.”
Vogel continued: “I think Hayden was an amazingly talented person in so many departments and I think young people who grow up in the entertainment industry — it is a struggle and it’s a very challenging industry and it’s not unusual for them to sadly find the wrong path.”
“CBS Mornings” co-anchor Vladimir Duthiers also became critical of Vogel’s NBC News statement, nodding to Panettiere’s history with mental health and addiction struggles, which the actress opened up about in her memoir from earlier this year, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” as well as in a sit-down interview with his colleague King timed to that book’s release.
“Hayden Panettiere spent years publicly acknowledging her own failures, her own struggles,” he said. “She did it with you in that interview. She cannot respond now, and for her mother to use these days after Hayden’s death to just remind the world just how much trauma she caused, it’s unseemly.”
King reflected that Vogel’s estranged relationship with her daughter seemed to a “complicated.”
“You hear stuff like that and you realize it was still very much in progress,” King said, adding of Vogel’s statement: “It makes me so sad that of the opportunity that you have after your daughter’s death that that’s what you choose to leave us with.”
Panettiere died Sunday after she was found unresponsive and in cardiac arrest at a South Carolina residence. An autopsy found no signs of trauma, but the official cause and manner of death remain under investigation.
