Hayden Panettiere has claimed that executives at Neutrogena wanted to fire her after she went public with her postpartum depression battle.
The Heroes actress, who gave birth to her daughter Kaya in December 2014, opened up about her experience with postpartum depression for the first time on Live with Kelly and Michael in September 2015.
Shortly after her appearance on the U.S. talk show, Hayden allegedly received a call from the skincare brand, who wanted to end her 10-year endorsement deal, which came with a morality clause.
"Neutrogena was a huge part of my life," she began on Jay Shetty's On Purpose podcast. "They caught absolutely everything (I did) and of all the things that they would fire me over, this was the last thing that I thought they would ever fire me over."
"So when I got that call that Neutrogena wanted to fire me over that, my representative at the time said, 'That's illegal, you can't do that,'" she continued. "And even though, you know, she saved the day that year, I know that that was going to be it, I was not going to be invited back the next year."
When they didn't renew her contract the following year, the Nashville star was surprised when nobody reached out to wish her well or see if she was doing OK.
"I had worked with these people for 10 years and I remember not hearing a word from anybody," she alleged. "And I remember that really breaking my heart."
Hayden, 36, explained that she didn't go into the 2015 interview planning to talk about it and the subject "just came up", however, she didn't expect anyone to "have a bad reaction to it" because she was sharing "her truth".
"I wouldn't change it for the world. I wouldn't take it back," she stated. "But as I said, of all the things that I had been caught doing, that being the thing that was where they drew the line and it was (considered) 'immoral' was shocking to me."
The Scream 4 actress added that the experience made her realise the level of stigma surrounding postpartum depression and how widely misunderstood it was at the time.
Representatives for Neutrogena have yet to address Hayden's allegations, which she first made in an interview with Us Weekly last week.
They also appear in her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, which will be released on 19 May.
