Naya Rivera’s Son Still Carries Heartbreaking Guilt, Believing He Could’ve Saved Her 5 Years After Tragic Drowning
Naya Rivera’s ex, Ryan Dorsey, still can’t bear to look at photos of the late Glee star. It’s been nearly five years since her drowning death at California’s Lake Piru in 2020. But the Justified actor is finally speaking out about the grief he carries and the life he’s built for their son, Josey, who’s now 9 years old.
Dorsey spoke with PEOPLE about his relationship with Rivera and her legacy in a forthcoming memoir. The 41-year-old now lives with Josey in his home state, West Virginia. He cites a lower cost of living, safety, and lack of traffic for his choice of residence. “I’m the only one earning money for Josey,” the Ray Donovan actor explained. “Everyone thinks that if she was successful, and if I’m on TV, that you have a bunch of money. But no one really knows the financial situation.”
Dorsey, who now auditions for LA-based roles virtually, continues to pursue his acting career, landing smaller roles on shows like Big Sky and Yellowstone. But he’s remained largely quiet since Rivera’s death on July 8, 2020. “I’ve turned down so many of these kind of things because it was too hard,” Dorsey told PEOPLE. “I still can’t really look at pictures of her, and it’s still hard to talk. But I feel like I’m ready. There’s just so much that happened.”
On that fateful summer day, Josey was discovered on a pontoon, asleep and alone, three hours after Rivera rented the boat for some mother-son fun. The pair had gone swimming on that windy day. As the anchor-less pontoon boat drifted away, Rivera and her son fought to get back to the vessel. The Glee star got Josey into the boat. But “then she went under, and he didn’t see her anymore,” Dorsey detailed. “He said that the last thing she said was his name.”
The 9-year-old continues to remember the details of that day. Josey told his dad that he tried to find a life raft but only saw a rope with a spider on it. “He was too scared to throw it,” Dorsey explained to PEOPLE. “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.”
Divers found Rivera’s body in a remote region of Lake Piru after five days of search and rescue efforts. Dorsey called it the “worst five days of my life.” In 2022, Ventura County settled a wrongful death lawsuit regarding the boat’s lack of anchor or flotation devices. Dorsey had filed it on behalf of Josey, who he says he treats differently now. “For me, it’s not a big deal if he hears a bad word or if he sees someone get killed on TV,” the actor explained. “I don’t know if that’s a bad way to go about raising him, but it is the cards we were dealt.”
