Viola Davis, Solange And Black Millennials Remember Hayden Panettiere

For a generation of Black millennials, Hayden Panettiere was simply always there. Long before she became the indestructible cheerleader Claire Bennet on Heroes or the complicated country star Juliette Barnes on Nashville , Panettiere had already become a familiar face in the movies that lived in our DVD collections, played repeatedly on cable and became part of the cultural language of our childhoods. She was Sheryl Yoast in Remember the Titans , the football-obsessed coach’s daughter who spent much of the film alongside Denzel Washington’s Coach Herman Boone and a team that included Wood Harris and Donald Faison. She was Gen Harwood in the Disney Channel-era favorite Ice Princess . And perhaps most memorably for many Black viewers, she was Britney Allen in Bring It On: All or Nothing , the cheer captain who found herself transplanted from the affluent Pacific Vista Pirates to the predominantly Black and Latino Crenshaw Heights Warriors. It’s part of what has made news of Panettiere’s death at just 36 years old feel so jarring. As Hollywood mourns an actress who spent nearly her entire life in front of the camera, Black actors, former co-stars and fans have also been reflecting on the perhaps unexpected but undeniable space she occupied in Black millennial pop culture. Viola Davis, who starred alongside Panettiere in the 2016 drama Custody , remembered the actress not only for her talent but for the person she was still becoming. NEW YORK – MAY 0…