NEW YORK — “A Breed Apart” director Griff Furst recalls Hayden Panettiere “fighting to stay sober” while acting in the 2025 film.

He also remembers Panettiere’s polarizing boyfriend Brian Hickerson visiting Panettiere during production. The director wasn’t impressed.

‘What I saw on my own set, somebody fighting to stay sober and who deserved better company around them than what I observed,” Furst says in an Instagram video detailing his experience with the 36-year-old star found dead in a South Carolina residence on Sunday afternoon.

Authorities are waiting the results of a toxicology test to determine Panettiere’s cause of death. TMZ reported that Hickerson was asleep in a bedroom of the home where the “Heroes” star was found unresponsive in a living room chair by Hickerson’s brother. Narcan, a medication administered to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, was reportedly present on that property.

Family and friends have said since her death that Hickerson’s presence in her life was cause for concern. He’s been accused of no wrongdoing in her death, but had a documented history of abusive behavior toward Panettiere.

Furst said that “no matter how certain you are that an actor or crew member is in a bad situation,” while working on a film, directors and producers are limited in what they can do to investigate or address such issues.

“You can adjust the schedule, you can collect internal reporting and you can assign a handler to make sure that that individual is being taken care of as best as they can,” he concedes in the video the director posted on Wednesday.

Furst said, after filming commenced on “A Breed Apart,” he was asked to participate in an intervention for the embattled actor. To the best of his knowledge, that gathering never took place.

Without giving specifics about his last encounter with Hickerson and Panettiere — whom he’d known for about a decade — the veteran filmmaker painted a bleak picture in a previously posted video.

“It was pretty clear that she wasn’t OK and the energy in her room was pretty dark,” he said on Monday.

Based on press coverage for her memoir released in May, Griff said he was under the impression Panettiere’s situation had improved since he worked with her.

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