Hayden Panettiere Had An Early Role On This Forgotten '90s Jim Henson Sitcom

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Hayden Panettiere, who died at age 36 on August 16, 2026, was best known for her leading roles in shows like "Heroes" and "Nashville," along with credits earlier in her career as a child actress in "Remember the Titans" and the classic ABC soap opera, "One Life to Live." Less-remembered was her appearance on a bizarre Jim Henson sitcom that ran for only eight episodes in the '90s.

Panettiere was just about to turn seven years old when she appeared in the fifth episode of "Aliens in the Family," which premiered as part of ABC's TGIF lineup — though the network bumped the show to Saturday after two episodes. The series followed a man who was abducted by an alien woman, only for the two to fall in love. They returned to Earth and settled down as the Brodys to raise their mixed-family — think an extra-terrestrial "Brady Bunch" mixed with "Dinosaurs," one of the weirdest sitcoms ever made.

In Panettiere's episode, "Too Good to Be True," she played a spoiled child named Audrey who was excited to get a new toy delivered to her house. Due to a mix-up, Bobut, the Brody family's baby alien who dreams of world domination, gets delivered to Audrey's house instead. She is delighted by her new plaything, but Bobut eventually goes home to his actual family.

"Aliens in the Family" was an odd genre detour in Hayden Panettiere's early TV career. When the episode aired, she already had a recurring role in "One Life to Live," ultimately playing Sarah Roberts in more than two dozen episodes from 1994 to 1997. On December 5, 1996, just a few months after she acted opposite a big-headed alien baby puppet in "Aliens in the Family," Panettiere made her debut as Lizzie Spaulding in the CBS series "Guiding Light" — the longest-running soap opera of all time. She even played Lizzie through a storyline where the character had Leukemia. Panettiere received a Special Recognition Award from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for the part.

"Hayden played my daughter for three years," Beth Chamberlin, who played Beth Raines on "Guiding Light," wrote in an Instagram post after Panettiere's death. "She was the most brilliant child actor I've ever seen." In her memoir "This Is Me: A Reckoning," Panettiere candidly wrote about how she was "groomed" to become a child actress and that it contributed to her substance abuse later in life. In this light, her various child acting credits — especially her appearance on a forgotten alien sitcom — are less of a curiosity and more of a tragedy.