• Brian Hickerson says he still dreams of marrying Hayden Panettiere, admitting “I miss Hayden every day”
• Hickerson revealed a chilling incident he wanted cut from her memoir — threatening to throw a phone at her after a countdown
• He pleaded no contest to felony domestic violence charges and served jail time, probation, and a five-year restraining order
• Panettiere’s memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning drops May 19 and covers the abusive relationship in detail
• Hickerson confirmed he spoke with Hayden the day before his interview — she was nervous about the book’s release

Brian Hickerson still wants to marry Hayden Panettiere. That’s the headline he delivered himself — unprompted, emotional, and seemingly unaware of how complicated that admission is coming from the man who was convicted of felony domestic violence against her.

Sitting down with TMZ’s Charlie Neff ahead of Panettiere’s upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, Hickerson opened up about the former couple’s relationship in a way that was by turns remorseful, self-aware, and, at moments, deeply unsettling. When asked if he ever thinks about marrying the former Nashville actress, he didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, of course,” he said. And when pushed on whether he thinks it could ever actually happen: “I hope so — she probably doesn’t think the same way.”

He followed that up with something more grounded. “I think that Hayden is one of the most talented people I’ve ever met in my life, and I would be an idiot not to walk away from her and let her flourish in her career. So, we probably wouldn’t be good together.” He also said, plainly, that she “absolutely” deserves better than him. “I miss Hayden every day,” he added.

The Incident He Wanted Left Out

The interview took a harder turn when Hickerson revealed the specific moment from their relationship he begged Panettiere not to include in the book. She included it anyway.

“There’s a story where I was drunk,” he recalled. “Hayden was standing across the room and I had a phone in my hand and I said, ‘I’ll give you 10 seconds to run as fast as you can before I throw it at you.'”

He paused on that. “Who wants to read something about themselves, right? But you gotta be vulnerable and I did it. I did it, so.”

Hickerson and Panettiere dated on and off from 2018 to 2022 — a relationship that became increasingly public for all the wrong reasons. He was arrested multiple times for domestic violence incidents against her. In April 2021, he pleaded no contest to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend and was sentenced to 45 days in county jail, four years probation, 52 mandatory domestic violence classes, and a five-year restraining order barring him from going near her.

He addressed the 2020 arrest directly: “I had a lot to drink and I got physical with her. I got arrested. Spent the night in jail and, you know, that’s just what happens when you lay hands on women.” And on the broader pattern of abuse: “You never lay hands on a woman, bottom line.”

On how their relationship looks in the memoir, he didn’t try to spin it. “I think it speaks for itself. I got arrested for abusing her, and I wouldn’t blame her friends for being pissed off at me. I don’t really have much to say on that.”

Working on Himself — and Rooting for Her

Hickerson said he’s been doing the work — AA meetings (he mentioned being in a group with Shia LaBeouf), therapy, and sitting with the weight of what he did. He also spoke about what he sees as a gap in how domestic violence is addressed culturally. “My biggest thing about domestic violence is I don’t think it is taught early enough in life. Never in my life did I ever get taught what domestic violence was. Maybe if I did at an early age, maybe I wouldn’t have done what I did.” He thinks the memoir could be an important read specifically for abusers — not just survivors.

“Hayden’s book is incredible,” he said. “I think everyone should read it. The domestic violence stuff — my chapter — everybody should read it.”

He confirmed he spoke with Panettiere just the day before his TMZ interview. “The conversation was about the book — it’s her first book, who wouldn’t be nervous about it? The only thing I said to her, I was like, ‘Look, dude, you’ve got one of the craziest stories I’ve ever heard in my life, and when people read it, it’s going to be a hit.'”

As for where they stand: “Our relationship right now is just a mutual respect thing. She’ll always hold a special place in my heart, and I hope the same for her. But yeah, we’re just good buddies.” The former couple was photographed together at an airport back in March, which had fans speculating about a rekindling — but Hickerson’s framing suggests it’s more complicated than that. He went into “such a dark place” during their relationship, he said — “drugs, alcohol” — and he seems to know, at least intellectually, that the distance is probably right.

Panettiere, 36, has described writing about that chapter of her life as “brutal, traumatic, and emotional.” In an interview with Us Weekly, she said: “It was important for me to word that experience properly. It’s a very embarrassing subject. I’ve always seen myself as such a resilient and strong woman. The idea that I could allow something like this to happen to me blew my mind. It blew the minds of the people that knew me best.”

This Is Me: A Reckoning hits shelves May 19.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or visit thehotline.org.

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• Hayden Panettiere’s memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning drops May 19 and covers abuse, addiction, postpartum depression, and her sexuality
• Ex Brian Hickerson, who pleaded no contest to felony domestic violence charges, says the book was brutal to read — but necessary
• Panettiere publicly came out as bisexual ahead of the memoir’s release, saying she waited until 36 out of fear
• She also opens up about the “living nightmare” of relinquishing custody of daughter Kaya to ex Wladimir Klitschko
• The book recounts an alleged assault by a famous male actor when she was just 18

Hayden Panettiere has never really let us all the way in — until now. With her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning hitting shelves on May 19, the 36-year-old actress is laying bare decades of pain, survival, and hard-won clarity: the abuse, the addiction, the postpartum depression, the custody heartbreak, and the parts of herself she kept hidden for far too long.

And in a genuinely unexpected twist, the man who abused her is telling people to read it too.

Brian Hickerson — Panettiere’s on-and-off boyfriend from 2018 to 2022, who was arrested multiple times on domestic violence charges and eventually pleaded no contest to felony counts — spoke ahead of the book’s release about what it was like to see his worst moments in print. He asked Hayden to leave one particular passage out. She didn’t.

The scene he wanted cut describes a drunken incident in which he allegedly threatened to hurl a phone at her, telling her: “I’ll give you 10 seconds to run as fast as you can before I throw it at you.”

“Who wants to read something about themselves like that?” Hickerson said — then caught himself. “I did it. I did it.”

That admission, uncomfortable and unvarnished, is exactly the kind of moment Hickerson says people like him need to be confronted with. He pushed the conversation beyond survivors, arguing that people accused of abuse should be forced to sit with these stories — that domestic violence education comes too late, and that he was never taught what abuse actually looked like growing up. In his view, Panettiere’s memoir could function as a warning manual for the very kind of person he became.

After his no contest plea, Hickerson was sentenced to jail time, placed on probation, and hit with a five-year restraining order keeping him away from Panettiere.

The Revelations That Go Beyond the Abuse

The memoir isn’t only about Hickerson. Not by a long stretch.

One of the book’s most alarming disclosures involves an incident Panettiere says happened when she was 18 — a friend lured her into a room where a famous male actor was waiting for her, naked, in bed. She recounted the story on the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast, saying: “Even though I felt I could make healthy decisions, safe decisions, I wasn’t capable of being fully aware of what was going on around me. It wasn’t until I found myself in predicaments that I realized my perspective completely shifted and I realized I was in danger. By the time I realized I was in danger, I was quite literally out to sea.”

She also opens up about her long battle with alcoholism and opioid addiction — a spiral she’s described previously but now contextualizes more fully. “I was on top of the world and I ruined it,” she told People in an earlier interview. “I think I hit rock bottom, but then there’s that trap door that opens.” She voluntarily entered inpatient treatment and underwent trauma therapy, and says she put serious work into rebuilding herself.

In an almost eerie parallel, Panettiere says her real-life unraveling began to mirror the arc of Juliette Barnes, the troubled country singer she was playing on Nashville at the time — a woman defined by addiction and self-destruction. Life and fiction blurring in the worst possible way.

She also reflects on her postpartum depression following the birth of her daughter Kaya in December 2014 — and how she didn’t immediately recognize what was happening to her. “I wish I knew about postpartum depression. I wish I knew to look out for it,” she’s said, explaining that she turned to alcohol to cope, which only deepened the damage.

The Custody Decision She Calls a ‘Living Nightmare’

Perhaps the most emotionally raw thread running through the memoir and its press tour is Panettiere’s account of relinquishing full custody of Kaya to her ex-fiancé, boxing legend Wladimir Klitschko, who lives in Ukraine. She made the custody agreement official in 2018, and the public reaction was brutal.

On the On Purpose podcast, she was direct about why she did it. She was heading into treatment. She needed to get better before she could be the mother Kaya deserved. “It became this horrible cycle for years of battling depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and substance abuse and me just trying to find my way out of this darkness,” she explained.

To Us Weekly, she called the decision a “living nightmare” — but also the right one. Klitschko, she said, is an “incredible father,” and by the time she’d stabilized enough to reconsider the arrangement, disrupting Kaya’s established life felt “unfair and selfish.”

“Signing those papers, the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever, ever had to do in my life,” she said on Red Table Talk. “I was gonna go work on myself, I was gonna get better, and when I got better then things would change… but that didn’t happen.”

She describes herself as a “mother lion” and is clear-eyed about the gap between what she wanted and what she was able to give. Today, she says she has an “incredible” relationship with Kaya — FaceTime calls, visits when she can make them, and a daughter who speaks multiple languages, loves horseback riding, and, by her mother’s account, is “happy and healthy mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually” and “no way feels abandoned.”

Coming Out at 36

Ahead of the memoir’s publication, Panettiere also publicly came out as bisexual in an interview with Us Weekly — something she says she’d held back for years out of fear.

“It was always the fear of not being perfect, and what my team was going to think about it, what the public’s opinion was going to be about it,” she said. “It was just never the right time, and it was a very difficult topic to articulate properly… It’s sad that I had to wait till I was 36 years old to share that part of me, but better late than never, right?”

For someone who became a household name as a child — on Heroes, on Nashville, in the Scream franchise — the weight of public perception has clearly shaped every disclosure, every silence, every carefully timed admission. This memoir, it seems, is her way of finally deciding she’s done waiting for the right time.

This Is Me: A Reckoning is out May 19.

The post Hayden Panettiere’s Memoir Covers It All — and Her Ex Agrees appeared first on Cream.

• Nick Pasqual, 36, was found guilty on all six counts including attempted murder for the May 2024 stabbing of ex-girlfriend Allie Shehorn
• Shehorn, a Hollywood makeup artist, was stabbed more than 20 times in her Shadow Hills home and spent over a week in the ICU
• Pasqual fled California after the attack and was detained at a U.S.-Mexico border checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas
• He also faces a separate forcible rape conviction from an incident a month before the stabbing
• Sentencing is set for June 2 — Pasqual faces a maximum of life in state prison

Nick Pasqual, an actor best known for his appearance on How I Met Your Mother, was convicted Friday of attempted murder and five additional counts stemming from a brutal 2024 attack on his ex-girlfriend, Hollywood makeup artist Allie Shehorn. A Los Angeles jury found him guilty on every charge he faced — and he now faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.

The verdict came after a trial that ran from April 27 to May 8. Pasqual, 36, had pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Beyond the attempted murder conviction, jurors found two special allegations to be true: that the attack caused great bodily injury under circumstances involving domestic violence, and that a deadly weapon was used. Pasqual was also convicted of three counts of injuring a spouse or partner, one count of first-degree residential burglary with a person present, and one count of forcible rape tied to an alleged incident that occurred a month before the stabbing. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 2 in Los Angeles.

What Happened the Night of the Attack

Prosecutors say Pasqual broke into Shehorn’s home in the Sunland neighborhood of Los Angeles at approximately 4:30 a.m. on May 23, 2024, and stabbed her more than 20 times. She suffered slash wounds to her neck, back, chest, and wrists. A friend, Christine White, found Shehorn and later told the Los Angeles Times, “I just told her to keep her hand on her throat to stop the bleeding.”

Shehorn was rushed to the hospital with critical injuries and underwent 14 hours of surgery, including procedures to repair severed tendons in her right arm and close wounds in her neck. She required breathing and feeding tubes during her recovery and spent more than a week in intensive care.

Pasqual had actually been arrested for domestic violence five days before the stabbing — on May 18, 2024 — and released on $50,000 bond. Shehorn’s friend Jed Dornoff told People at the time: “As soon as he paid his bail, he came after her.” Shehorn had also filed a restraining order against Pasqual in the days before the attack, alleging the relationship had turned physically and sexually abusive.

After the attack, Pasqual fled California. He was detained roughly a week later at a U.S.-Mexico border checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas, and extradited back to Los Angeles.

Shehorn Took the Stand — Scars and All

Shehorn testified during the trial with the scars from that night still visible on her arms and neck. She described a violent fight with Pasqual that preceded their breakup — one that made clear the relationship had become dangerous long before the stabbing.

“I locked the door and he just started punching holes in that door and broke that open, and I just ran into the bathroom because I thought there’s another lock on that door,” she said from the witness stand.

Shehorn’s credits in Hollywood include makeup work on films like Babylon, Family Switch, Mean Girls, and Rebel Moon — which is, notably, also where she and Pasqual first met. He worked as a background actor on the Zack Snyder film; she was on the makeup team.

The Reaction From Shehorn’s Circle

Friends had launched a GoFundMe after the attack to help cover Shehorn’s mounting medical expenses. The day after the verdict, one of the organizers, Emily MacDonald, posted an update that captured what two years of waiting for justice had felt like.

“Yesterday, May 8, after more than two years of waiting, Nick was found guilty on all 6 counts, including first-degree attempted murder,” MacDonald wrote. “There are truly no words to fully express our gratitude to the two incredible Deputy District Attorneys, Sam and Chelsea, who worked tirelessly to bring Nick to justice. Their dedication, compassion, and persistence throughout this entire process meant more to us than we can say.”

“This verdict does not erase the trauma or the long road of recovery ahead, but it is an important step toward accountability and healing,” she added. “To everyone who has supported Allie through this journey — whether through donations, messages, prayers, or simply standing by us — thank you. Your support has carried us through some of the darkest moments of the last two years.”

Who Is Nick Pasqual?

Pasqual appeared as Ted’s architecture student Will in the How I Met Your Mother Season 7 episode “Field Trip” — a single-episode credit that became the most prominent name attached to him as the case unfolded. Beyond that, he had small roles in the Steve Jobs biopic Jobs (starring Ashton Kutcher), an uncredited part in Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire, roles in TV series including Archive 81, Gone, and One Dollar, and 46 episodes of the comedy web series National Day Riff. He also starred in the 2009 Mischa Barton film Homecoming.

Pasqual will be back in a Los Angeles courtroom on June 2. The maximum sentence he faces is life in state prison.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support.

The post HIMYM Actor Nick Pasqual Guilty of Attempted Murder appeared first on Cream.

• Actor Nick Pasqual was found guilty on May 8 of attempted murder in the 2024 stabbing of Hollywood makeup artist Allie Shehorn
• Pasqual broke into Shehorn’s Sunland, California home at 4:30 a.m. and stabbed her more than 20 times despite an active restraining order
• He was captured seven days later trying to cross into Mexico at a Texas border checkpoint
• Shehorn, who had visible scars on her arm and neck, testified against him at the San Fernando Courthouse
• Pasqual faces a maximum sentence of life in prison; sentencing is scheduled for June 2

Nick Pasqual, the actor best known for his appearances on How I Met Your Mother, was found guilty of attempted murder on Friday, May 8, after a California jury convicted him of breaking into his estranged girlfriend’s home and stabbing her more than 20 times.

The verdict, handed down at the San Fernando Courthouse, covers three counts: attempted murder, first-degree residential burglary with a person present, and injuring a spouse, cohabitant, or partner. Court records reviewed by the New York Post also list forcible rape and domestic violence among the charges. Pasqual, 36, now faces a maximum sentence of life in state prison. A sentencing hearing has been set for June 2.

The victim, Hollywood makeup artist Allie Shehorn, took the witness stand last week with scars still visible on her arm and neck — a permanent reminder of what happened in the early morning hours of May 23, 2024. Prosecutors say Pasqual broke into her Sunland, California home at approximately 4:30 a.m. and attacked her. According to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, he “inflicted great bodily injury upon the victim under circumstances involving domestic violence” and “personally used a knife during the commission of the crime.”

Shehorn’s friend Christine White found her lying in a pool of blood that morning, with what she believed was more than 20 stab wounds. “I just told her to keep her hand on her throat to stop the bleeding,” White told the Los Angeles Times.

What Led Up to the Attack

On the stand, Shehorn, 37, recounted the relationship’s violent deterioration through tears. In her restraining order, she had accused Pasqual of using a belt on her, breaking down doors, leaving her with a concussion, and raping and choking her. The couple’s final blowup before the breakup stayed with her.

“I locked the door and he just started punching holes in that door and broke that open,” she told the court, per ABC7. “I just ran into the bathroom because I thought there’s another lock on that door.”

What makes the timeline even more chilling: just five days before the stabbing, Pasqual had been booked into a Los Angeles jail and released on a $50,000 bond. He wasted no time. “As soon as he paid his bail, he came after her,” Shehorn’s friend Jeff Dornoff told People in May 2024.

Pasqual allegedly fled California immediately after the attack. He wasn’t captured until May 30 — seven days later — when he was stopped at a U.S./Mexico border checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas.

Fourteen Hours of Surgery, and a Long Road Back

Shehorn suffered multiple slashes to her neck, cuts on her arms and abdomen, and spent nearly a week fighting for her life in the ICU. She underwent 14 hours of intensive, life-saving and reconstructive surgeries before she was stable enough to be moved to a different part of the hospital.

Dornoff kept the public updated through a GoFundMe page set up to help cover her medical costs. “Allie Shehorn is making positive steps to her recovery,” he wrote on May 29, 2024. “It’s still a very long road but she is facing it with courage and determination.”

By July, the updates had turned more hopeful. “Allie has an awesome group of family and friends who have helped house her, transport her and give the tlc she’s needed,” Dornoff wrote. “The main thing is she has been kept safe and happy, which accounts for her awesome healing.” He added a promise for the future: “One day, when this all is over we will have Allie write out her story on here, let you know what happened.”

Shehorn’s credits in the industry include Mean Girls, Rebel Moon: Part One, and Babylon. A year before the attack, she had won Best SFX Makeup at the Hollywood Blood Horror Festival for her work on Incorrigible. According to the New York Post, she has returned to work since her recovery and has accumulated nine credits since 2025, including Rainn Wilson’s action-comedy Code 3.

Pasqual had been acting for 16 years before the conviction. His sentencing next month will determine whether he spends the rest of his life behind bars.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or visit thehotline.org. The hotline is free, confidential, and available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

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