Filmmaker Griff Furst, who worked with Hayden Panettiere on the motion picture A Breed Apart, said that Brian Hickerson boasted to him he could get the late actress 'to do anything' while making the movie.Furst, 44, took to Instagram on Monday and shared a story about a troubling interaction he claimed he had with Hickerson during the moviemaking process.'The first scene that I'm directing Hayden in, we are in the middle of a camera rehearsal, and I'm at the monitor, and he's about 15 feet away on the set,' Furst said. 'And I feel Brian hovering in on my shoulder, and he leans in, and he says to me, "You let me know what you need her to do - I can get her to do anything."'Furst said that his 'immediate reaction to that was, "What the f***?"'But what I said was alright, because what else do you say? Because you're in the middle of a rehearsal, and somebody you didn't hire says that to you.'The Daily Mail has contacted representatives for Furst and Hickerson's attorneys for comment.Filmmaker Griff Furst, who worked with Hayden Panettiere on the motion picture A Breed Apart, said that Brian Hickerson boasted to him he could get the late actress 'to do anything' while making the movie. Panettiere and Hickerson pictured December 2018 Furst took to Instagram on Monday and shared a story about a troubling interaction he claimed he had with Hickerson during the moviemaking process; Pictured in 2024The remarks came more than a week after the Heroes actress was found dead aged 36 of a suspected overdose on August 16 at an Airbnb in Greenville, South Carolina, where she had traveled with her on-off boyfriend Hickerson, a native of the state.Hickerson, who was in a turbulent romance with Panettiere and once went to jail for abusing her, was on the scene along with his brother Zachary when she was pronounced dead, according to a police report. Her autopsy found 'no signs of trauma' that 'would have contributed to the death.'In the clip Monday, Furst described Hickerson's alleged comment as 'a direct attempt to control,' adding it had been 'presented like this bizarre power flex.'He added, 'We could all see it, and we all wanted to help, but spotting a red flag, and then physically pulling somebody out of a toxic situation, are very different things.'Furst said he doesn't believe that Hickerson 'wanted this tragedy to happen at all, but the dynamic that they were in was noticeably destructive.'He said Hickerson 'is just not the kind of person that you would want directing the life of a coworker, or a friend, or a mother, or a daughter.'Furst drew parallels between Panettiere and late actress Brittany Murphy, who he worked with on the 2009 film Tribute prior to her death at 32 in December of 2009.'It made me think of the similarities to Brittany Murphy just in the sense that I made a movie with her about a year before she passed,' Furst said. Furst drew parallels between Panettiere and late actress Brittany Murphy, who he worked with on the 2009 film Tribute prior to her death at 32. Pictured weeks before her untimely death in December of 2009 in LA The director of one of Hayden Panettiere's final movies claimed her entourage asked him to join an intervention for her that ultimately failed to materialize; Panettiere pictured in 2022 He called Murphy a 'brilliant, incredibly gifted woman who got sucked into a dark place alongside the partner that she chose,' in reference to the late Simon Monjack, who died at the age of 40 about five months after Murphy passed away.Furst said that he's 'seen scores of people who have [been] lost to substance [abuse], and on their way down, their loss was amplified by the company that they kept.'These tragedies seem to always be preceded by an identifiable pattern which is the reason that I'm talking about this right now, because it's in the spotlight. The filmmaker said Panettiere's passing marks 'a moment where people ... are willing to take an honest assessment of the people that they care about, and maybe break through and help somebody that feels trapped.'Furst last week claimed Panettiere's team asked him to join an intervention for her that ultimately failed to materialize. Furst, who helmed A Breed Apart with his brother Nathan, has said she was 'fighting to stay sober' while he worked with her.Panettiere died at the end of a long struggle with alcohol and opiates, spending eight months in rehab in 2020 after contracting jaundice and being informed by her doctor that 'if I didn't stop drinking, I'd be dead within five years,' as she wrote in her memoir.In 2018, in order to devote herself to her recovery from her personal demons, Panettiere voluntarily gave up custody of her now 11-year-old daughter Kaya. Panettiere's passing marks 'a moment where people ... are willing to take an honest assessment of the people that they care about, and maybe break through and help somebody that feels trapped.' Pictured 2022 in LA Kaya was handed over to the care of her father, Ukrainian boxing star Wladimir Klitschko, with whom Panettiere retained an amicable co-parenting bond. In an Instagram video posted Wednesday, Furst said he 'was rooting for Hayden' to triumph over her addictions, but that as a 'producer or director' on the set of their film, 'no matter how certain you are that an actor or a crew member is in a bad situation, you don't have the proof or the benefit of the time to verify it.'He argued that he was left with the measures of being able to 'adjust the schedule, you can collect internal reporting and you can assign a handler to make sure that the individual is being taken care of as best as they can.' Furst then alleged that he remained in contact with 'her team' after filming concluded 'and what eventually got determined was that she might need an intervention, and I was asked to participate and I said yes.'However 'that intervention did not happen, at least not that I'm aware of,' said Furst. 'And I wasn't leading the charge on that. It wouldn't have been appropriate for me.'He recalled that Panettiere 'brought' Hickerson to the set of A Breed Apart, adding that 'all I know about that is what we observed and wrote down at the time that it happened with her boyfriend Brian Hickerson.' Furst added: 'I wasn't in South Carolina. I don't know what happened, but I will say is my opinion and it's only about what I saw on my own set - somebody fighting to stay sober who deserved better company around them than what I observed.'On Monday, the day after Panettiere's death, Furst had posted an Instagram video offering a more detailed account of Hickerson's appearance on the set.The actor and filmmaker explained that he had met Panettiere 'about 10 years' before they made A Breed Apart 'and I knew that she was insanely talented, so when she signed on to do this picture that we were shooting, I was psyched.'He remembered hearing from 'the movie's security team who picked her up from the airport that something was off. And I didn't think much about it, and so I left set and I walked over to greet her and her boyfriend Brian. He opened the door and Hayden was incredibly sweet and gracious and excited to work, but she was not okay.' Panettiere is pictured in A Breed Apart, a horror comedy that Furst helmed alongside his brother NathanFurst declined to 'get into the details of why that was, but having worked on over 100 movies and seen just about everything, it was pretty clear that she wasn't okay, and the energy in her room was pretty dark.' Panettiere first took up with Hickerson in 2018, when she was in the depths of her struggles with drink and opioids and had recently split from Klitschko. Over the course of their turbulent relationship, Hickerson faced multiple domestic violence charges, and in 2021 he served 13 days in custody for injuring her.After she was declared dead on Sunday, Hickerson is said to have handed the authorities a 'bag of medication' she had been taking, per the police report.Although his brother was 'very emotional' during attempts to revive Panettiere, Hickerson is claimed to have remained impassive until she was declared dead, according to the police report.The Daily Mail has exclusively revealed that Panettiere was also the subject of romance rumors with Zach, a pastor, during a brief period in 2019.Zach and Panettiere were glimpsed walking hand in hand in New York that September, at which point a witness described them as resembling a 'real couple.'Panettiere's memoir offered a blistering account of her history with Brian Hickerson and also detailed her fraught equation with her mother Lesley Vogel, who used to be her manager as a child star but from whom she ultimately became estranged.Vogel characterized their rift as a 'recent occurrence' dating back to 'around mid-September' of last year, while speaking to the Daily Mail this May.'We each are entitled to choose our path in life,' said Panettiere's mother at the time, adding: 'After 20 years of trauma, chaos, addictions [and] accusations, I felt I had no other option but to choose no contact.' Panettiere's memoir offered a blistering account of her past with Hickerson, and also detailed her fraught equation with her mother Lesley Vogel; Vogel and Panettiere pictured 2007Furst's disclosures came as Justin Chatwin, her co-star on her final movie Sleepwalker, reflected on how 'lonely' she seemed to him during filming last year.'We hit it off great and it was an awesome shoot, but it was about domestic abuse and it was subject matter that may have hit close to home, because she did mention it,' Chatwin told People. 'She opened up to me about a lot of things.'He observed: 'I could tell she was struggling, and I was like: "I don't think it's this movie." There's a handful of women that I've worked with that I really liked, and I really loved working with her, but I also know that she was really lonely.' The Daily Mail contacted Chatwin's representatives for further comment. Chatwin had met her during the height of her fame on Heroes, which she starred on from 2006 to 2010, but noticed a marked difference in her state of mind by the time they worked with one another on Sleepwalker.'Hayden seemed different when I met her this time than when I met her in the early years. I've been sober for 15 years, so I know this world of addiction, and Hollywood - it takes, and it takes from youth,' he said.'“I’m sure that everyone else is going to say: "Oh, she’s amazing. She’s such a sweet person on set," because she was,' Chatwin noted.'But we’re trained to be actors, so we’re acting on set, you know? And she is sweet. She had a beautiful heart. But we’re trained to be on, and I really liked spending time with her because she took that off, and she was authentic with me about her life and she opened up about her struggles with addiction,' he revealed.'And who knows where it comes from? Does it come from Hollywood? Does it come from home? And a lot of times, it’s both.'