Neutrogena on Thursday responded to mounting public backlash it is facing in the wake of Hayden Panettiere's death, who once served as a star ambassador for the brand during the heyday of her acting career.
The skincare brand featured Panettiere in ads that ran between 2005 and 2015. She said in her 2026 memoir that the company canceled her long-standing contract over a "moral clause" after she went public with her battle with post-partum depression in 2015 on the show "Live with Kelly and Michael."
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After releasing her memoir, "This is Me: A Reckoning," Panettiere spoke about the firing on the Jay Shetty Podcast in May.
"Of all the things to... that they would fire me over, this was the last thing that I thought they would ever fire me over," she said.
Some people criticized Neutrogena on social media after hearing about Panettiere's side before her death. That criticism has now grown into a flood of backlash in the wake of her death, with many people calling for a boycott of the brand.
On Thursday, Neutrogena posted on Instagram that it understood it "made her feel unsupported during a very difficult time." The post did not directly apologize or say why, exactly, the company had severed ties with her in 2015. The account also turned off public comments on the post.
"We are deeply saddened by Hayden Panettiere's passing. For more than a decade, Hayden was a valued member of our Neutrogena community. We are proud to have partnered with here and understand that we made her feel unsupported during a very difficult time. This not what Neutrogena stands for or who we want to be," the post read.
NBC News said it reached out to the company about the claims and criticism on Wednesday. A spokesperson for the brand did not respond to its request for further comment.
Molly McPherson, a PR and crisis management expert, spoke on NBC News Now about the backlash and said it would take more than words for Neutrogena to respond to the backlash.
"Now what they need to see is action. This is not a time for a press release. Certainly, Neutrogena, this is one of these unknowns in crisis management. You could never plan for this. But you can always plan to be empathetic," McPherson said.
"This is the case of the story that they can no longer make good to the person who talked about this in May 2026," she said. "Now it is almost too late, and the silence is deafening here. The social media commentary is being written, this narrative is being written by the public, and the public is not giving them a break."
McPherson said she suspects the company would need to take earnest action toward maternal health in order to ease some of the backlash it is facing.
Panettiere died in her apartment over the weekend in Greenville, South Carolina. No cause has been determined, and her death remains under investigation. An autopsy found no signs of trauma, and police said officers saw no signs of foul play, according to the Associated Press.
Police said her on-and-off boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, and his brother, Zach Hickerson, were at the apartment when she died.
“I observed Zach to be very emotional while EMS were working on Hayden. Brian did not become emotional until EMS declared her officially deceased,” the officer said.
She would have turned 37 on Friday.