Heroes creator Tim Kring calls Hayden Panettiere a “seasoned professional” who was “always a Joy” on set 

Heroes creator Tim Kring has paid tribute to Hayden Panettiere following her death at thirty-six. Kring, who created and ran the hit NBC show, penned an essay for Variety on Tuesday, August 18, remembering the actress he first met when she came in to audition at sixteen years old. She blew him away. Kring wrote that Panettiere

"was a seasoned professional by the time she auditioned for Heroes at the age of 16."

As per the essay, what struck Kring wasn't just her ability. It was what she didn't carry with her.

"But unlike many actors who start working as kids, Hayden had no sense of jaded child actor quality to her. Although confident in her abilities, she was still guileless, sweet and always open to suggestions. It was a fait accompli that she would embody the role of Claire Bennet, aka the Cheerleader, from the moment we met her."

Tim Kring also spoke about how genuinely rare Hayden Panettiere was to work with, adding that

"As a showrunner, I have come to appreciate how rare it is to cross paths with a talent like Hayden's. But more importantly, I will remember her as a kind and gentle person who was always a joy and an inspiration to work with."

Tim Kring recalls how Hayden Panettiere elevated every scene she was in:

In the same Variety essay, Kring spoke at length about what made Hayden Panettiere so singular as a performer. Not just her talent. The quality of it. In his opinion, she brought something to Heroes that went far beyond memorising lines, describing her as having

"an almost savant-like quality about her work."

Kring also reflected on something specific about her role that made her performance stand out even further. Hayden Panettiere was playing a teenager while actually being one, a situation which added a layer he found remarkable, writing that

"she was playing her actual age, which made for kind of a meta quality to the role because she had to understand her own teenage emotions in order to access them."

Most actors her age, he noted, simply wouldn't have been capable of that. Kring expanded on why, adding that

"Most 16-year-olds don't know how to interpret or articulate these emotions, let alone embody them. But she had a deep understanding of human nature that belied her age. As a result, she could find moments within a scene that always made it deeper, or funnier, or more powerful than it was on the page. "

"As a writer, you yearn for a relationship with an actor who elevates everything that you write and finds hidden nuances that you didn't realize were there. That happened very, very often with her," he continued.

Tim Kring on how Hayden Panettiere became impossible to separate from Claire Bennet:

Kring also wrote about something that stood out to him over the course of production. The line between Hayden Panettiere and Claire Bennet eventually stopped being clear. He noted that

"Claire Bennet ended and Hayden started became a blurred line. She never had to change how she would say something to be Claire Bennet. It was the Hayden voice cadence that we got used to writing for."

Her work ethic was something else entirely. Kring shared a specific memory from set, writing that

"if a scene called for Hayden to cry, we would all marvel at how she could cry with intensity for 12 takes in a row. When the director yelled 'Cut,' she'd go back to texting her friends or laughing with her castmates right up until the moment the director called 'Action' for the next take. Then out would come the waterworks again."

Kring described her as having a "bull-in-a-china-shop quality," a determination that shaped how the writers wrote her character. In his opinion,

"the best characters always meet you halfway between the actor and what's on the page."

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Heroes was a hit show, and Hayden Panettiere was a breakout star. That being said, Kring wrote that it never went to her head. She "always understood the ensemble nature of the show and had a genuine sense of gratefulness for everyone involved," and the people around her felt it too.

"we all understood that she was a unique talent, and we felt the responsibility to caretake that talent for the short time we had with her on the show," explained Kring.

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