James Blunt Denies He Is the 'Very Famous Undressed Man' in Hayden Panettiere's Yacht Memoir as Timeline Doesn't Add Up

James Blunt is addressing speculation that he was the “very famous undressed man” Hayden Panettiere described in a disturbing yacht incident in her memoir.

On Monday, August 24, the “You’re Beautiful” singer reposted journalist Dean Piper’s Substack article on X. The piece challenged online speculation that Blunt was the person Panettiere was referring to when she described an alleged sexual harassment incident that happened when she was 18.

Panettiere discussed the experience in her book, This Is Me: A Reckoning, which was published before her death on August 16.

In Piper’s article, titled Hayden Panettiere and James Blunt – An Internet Lynching, the journalist recalled meeting Panettiere and Blunt at the amfAR charity event in Cannes in 2009.

“They’d arrived together, had been flirty throughout and had gone to the afterparty together,” Piper recalled. “They were photographed on a boat the next day, smiling and having fun.”

The photos of the pair later circulated online, leading some people to connect Blunt to the story from Panettiere’s memoir.

However, Piper argued that the dates don't match up.

“Guys, it only takes the smallest of AI searches to find out that in May 2009, when the pictures of Blunt and Panettiere were taken, she was 19, almost 20. So, if the incident happened when she was 18, Blunt’s not your guy to start with,” he penned.

“It takes nothing to work out that the cabin incident was the first and last time she met the man,” he added. “So, pictures of Blunt and Panettiere at the amfAR charity event and together on the boat again the next day mean only one thing – he’s really not your man.”

Panettiere previously became emotional while discussing the incident and the effect it had on her.

The Scream 4 star reflected on being so young when the alleged encounter happened, explaining that she believed she was more prepared to make adult decisions than she actually was.

“The fact that I was 18, even though I’d lived such a huge life and I thought I was oh so mature at 18 … scientifically, your frontal lobes don’t develop until we’re what, 25, 26?” she began on the May 11 episode of Jay Shetty’s podcast "On Purpose.”

“So even though I felt like I could make healthy decisions, safe decisions, I wasn’t capable of being fully aware of what was going on around me," she explained.

The actress said the situation became especially frightening once she realized she was far from shore.

“I was quite literally out to sea," she remembered, adding the “shocking” circumstance rocked her to her core.

What started as what Panettiere believed would be a fun evening reportedly took a much darker turn.

“There were no hints of anything like that happening,” she said. “So it took me by surprise.”

“It was led by somebody that I had grown to trust and see as a protector and somebody who had my back,” Panettiere noted.

She then described being taken into a confined space on the yacht, where she said she was positioned beside an unidentified man.

“I was taken into a “very small room" and "physically" placed on a bed beside an “undressed” man who was "very famous."

Panettiere said the man behaved as though the situation was completely ordinary.

According to her account, that realization triggered an immediate response.

"That lion in me, that fire in me … my hair stood on end and I became ferocious,” she said, adding that she went into fight-or-flight mode to get herself out of the situation. “I was like, ‘This is not happening.'"

She said she eventually fled the room and tried to find somewhere else to hide on the boat.

“There was no jumping off and swimming away,” she looked back. “And there was nobody who was going to be empathetic to my situation. I realized that this was nothing new to them.”