Naya Rivera’s ex Ryan Dorsey has broken his silence about her death in a new interview — five years after her tragic drowning.
Dorsey, who was married to the “Glee” actress from 2014 to 2018, said he was in a Ralphs supermarket in July 2020 when Rivera’s mother’s husband called him and told him the star was missing after taking their then-4-year-old son Josey on a pontoon rental boat in Lake Piru, Calif.
“I instantly said, ‘What do you mean? She knows how to swim,’” Dorsey, 41, shared with People. “He said, ‘They jumped in, and Josey got back on, and they’re trying to find Naya.’”
“I collapsed into a pallet of drinks,” Dorsey recalled. “I didn’t know what to think, but I feared the worst.”
The “Justified” actor said he instantly got in his car and traveled 145 miles to Lake Piru.
“I drove 100-and-something the whole way with my four-way hazards on, chain-smoking cigarettes — and I don’t even smoke, really — and just crying,” he said. “I just wanted to get to Josey.”
While Rivera went missing in the water, Josey was found asleep wearing a life jacket on the boat, which wasn’t equipped with an anchor or flotation devices.
Authorities later determined that Rivera, who was 33, sacrificed her own life to save Josey. Her body was found in a remote part of the lake five days later.
“It was the worst five days of my life,” said Dorsey, who lost 40 pounds over the stress of Rivera’s death. “There was a fear, what if we don’t find her? It was just awful.”
Dorsey revealed that his now-9-year-old son has vivid memories of the day Rivera died.
“He said that the last thing she said was his name, and then she went under, and he didn’t see her anymore,” Dorsey explained. “It just rocks my world that he had to witness her last moments.”
Dorsey also said that his son feels guilty for what happened.
“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 shared, “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.”
While Dorsey wasn’t there for Rivera’s tragic drowning, he said he thinks he “probably would have jumped in” and “saved the day.”
“But on the other hand,” he added, “I think maybe something bad could have happened to both of us. I don’t know.”
Four months after Rivera’s death, Dorsey filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of his son against Ventura County and Lake Piru’s management. The suit was settled in 2022.
He told People that it was “too hard” for him to talk about Rivera’s passing at length over the last four and half years.
“I still can’t really look at pictures of her, and it’s still hard to talk, but I feel like I’m ready,” he said at the beginning of the interview. “There’s just so much that happened.”
Dorsey also shared how Josey — who he’s been raising with the help of Rivera’s younger sister Nickayla, 30 — has been coping without his mom.
“We made this book of memories for Josey that sits by his bed, and during the holidays he was crying looking at it,” Dorsey said. “You can only give him a hug and tell him, ‘I know, life is not fair. Bad things happen and there’s no reason for it, and you just have to do your best to be a good person.’”
The “Ray Donovan” actor added, “It’s hard trying to explain things that you can’t really make sense of no matter what age you are. Im not a big believer in everything happens for a reason because I can’t ever think of a reason why he doesn’t have his mom.”
