It's been nearly five years since Glee star Naya Rivera tragically drowned. Now, ex-husband Ryan Dorsey is breaking his silence about the actress's passing.
Speaking with People, he said that the past five years have been tough. He's constantly reminded of her and has continued to raise their son, Josey, in her absence.
"I'm here in L.A. working at Warner Bros., and Forest Lawn Cemetery [where she's buried] is on the other side," Dorsey said. "So many songs make me think about her, like Amy Winehouse's 'Valerie,' which she sang on Glee, and 'Sunflower' by [Post Malone and Swae Lee] because I always used to get her sunflowers on Sundays."
Dorsey said that his son has been through a lot. At just 4 years old, he was forced to watch his mother drown. Naya drowned while swimming off a boat in Lake Piru on July 8, 2020. "I treat him differently than I would a normal kid because of what he's been through," Dorsey admits. "For me, it's not a big deal if he hears a bad word or if he sees someone get killed on TV. I don't know if that's a bad way to go about raising him, but it is the cards we were dealt."
Naya Rivera Drowns
"I instantly said, 'What do you mean? She knows how to swim,'" Dorsey says. "He said, 'They jumped in, and Josey got back on, and they're trying to find Naya.' I collapsed into a pallet of drinks. I didn't know what to think, but I feared the worst."
"If we'd have lost both Naya and Josey, I don't know how I would continue on with my life," Dorsey says. "I don't know what I would've done, but I'm sure it wouldn't have been good. It was the worst five days of my life. There was a fear, what if we don't find her? It was just awful."
Regrets
"He said that the last thing she said was his name, and then she went under, and he didn't see her anymore," Dorsey says. "It just rocks my world that he had to witness her last moments."
"Something he's said over and over is that he was trying to find a life raft, and there was a rope, but there was a big spider on the rope, and he was too scared to throw it," Dorsey says. "I keep reassuring him, 'Buddy, that rope wasn't going to be long enough.' That obviously still sticks out in his head because he feels like he could have saved her. I think she just got caught up in a brush — that or a weird undercurrent from the dam. It was just a freak occurrence."
"I probably would have jumped in, and I like to think I would've saved the day," he says. "But on the other hand, I think maybe something bad could have happened to both of us. I don't know."
