Hayden Panettiere is setting the record straight about her decision to give over full custody of her daughter, Kaya, to her ex-fiancé, Wladimir Klitschko, in 2018.
The “Heroes” actor appeared on Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast on Monday, where she got candid about the “layered” feelings she still has over the moment Klitschko requested Kaya, who was 2 years old at the time, to live full-time with him in Europe.
“The idea that anybody would think that I would just give away my child and be OK with it is heartbreaking. Couldn’t be further from the truth,” she explained. “I was struggling with mental health and anxiety and the postpartum [depression] and having to axe my way through it and just feeling like I completely lost myself.”
She went on to note: “When that first happened, I did not have a good reaction to it. I went, like, mother lion. I would’ve burnt the world down for my child, so that was incredibly difficult ― the fact that my child wasn’t going to be with me all day, every day, you can’t put words to it.”
Panettiere and Klitschko, a former professional boxer who hails from Ukraine, dated from about 2009 to 2018. In 2015, Panettiere voluntarily entered a treatment facility to help with postpartum depression.
