During her life, Naya Rivera had professional successes, but also had her share of tumultuous
relationships, career setbacks, and health struggles.
Here are the tragic details of Naya Rivera's life.
Naya Rivera was barely old enough to be in kindergarten when she landed her first major
role on the CBS sitcom The Royal Family.
The Eddie Murphy co-created series, which starred Della Reese lasted only a single season
following the death of actor Redd Foxx, who played Rivera's on-screen grandfather.
"We are a proud, strong family, because we're still living in the love of a proud, strong
man."
Rivera had formed a tight-knit bond with the late actor.
In her memoir Sorry Not Sorry, she revealed that Foxx would tell people they were actually
related, and after a while, Naya began to believe him.
Then, one day during rehearsal, she witnessed him suddenly fall to the floor.
The cast initially thought Foxx was joking, but Reese quickly realized it was serious
and called the ambulance.
The entire production ended up following Foxx to the hospital, where they learned the news.
Rivera wrote:
"We sat there, his TV family and his real family, all mixed together in the waiting
room, praying and trying to comfort one another.
When the doctor came out to tell us that Redd had passed, he delivered the news to the entire
group."
In Sorry Not Sorry, Rivera opened up about the eating disorder she suffered from as a
teenager.
At the time, she'd already been acting for over a decade, but her career was seemingly
stalled.
The fear of becoming a child star has-been was only punctuated by her parents' divorce.
Though they eventually got back together, the actress began to restrict food regularly.
By the time she entered her sophomore year of high school, it had spiraled out of control.
Rivera weighed just 98 pounds at the height of her illness.
She fainted from dehydration during gym class and would find any excuse to get rid of the
lunches her mother packed her.
She didn't even fully understand how extreme her eating disorder was until she penned her
memoir years after the fact.
She told People:
"I was so young, and it just seemed to be the norm.
Everyone was going through similar stuff, I had no way of knowing if I was going through
it worse.
I was juggling my feelings, and it makes me sad that there are girls still going through
that 15 years after I went through it."
Rivera did manage to recover.
In her memoir, she revealed that she, quote, "gained 15 pounds and never looked back."
Rivera's relationship with Mark Salling was messy.
The pair first met in 2009 on the set of Glee and dated on and off for three years, but
you'd basically never know it.
According to her memoir, Salling kept their relationship a secret because his publicist
thought that being single would be, quote, "better for his image."
"You're breaking up with me…
Why?"
Apparently, the actor first told Rivera "I love you" when he was, quote, "high on Ecstacy,"
which gives that sentiment a pretty big asterisk.
They had only been dating a month, and this came after Rivera stuck it out on their disastrous
first date.
Throughout the relationship, Rivera believed Salling was cheating on her, and they'd regularly
have huge blow out fights.
This manifested in Rivera's first tabloid scandal, when Us Weekly claimed the actress
keyed Salling's car in a jealous rage.
That never happened.
In reality, she enlisted her best friend to help her dump, quote, "dog food, Coca-Cola,
eggs, and bird seed" all over his car while he was away.
Ultimately, her relationship with Salling is one of the only ones she regrets, if only
because of what came later.
In 2017, Salling pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography.
He ended up striking a plea deal which involved having to register as a sex offender, enter
rehabilitation, pay $50,000 in restitution to each of the victims, and to serve a potential
four to seven years in prison.
In Sorry Not Sorry, Rivera admitted she had dodged a bullet, despite the pain she felt
after his publicist allegedly told him to dump her in 2010.
She wrote:
"Then I had no doubt that God really did have my back along the way.
When Mark dumped me, I thought it was the worst thing ever, but can you imagine if that
didn't happen?
And I was laying there in bed when the battering ram came through the door?"
Salling never ended up being sentenced.
The star took his own life in 2018 after a possible attempt some months prior.
Rivera and Ray Donovan actor Ryan Dorsey were on-and-off since the very beginning.
In her memoir, Rivera admitted that the pair first began dating in 2010, but they split
so she could focus on Glee's budding success.
In the weeks after their breakup, the actress discovered that she was pregnant.
Again, she prioritized her career and made the difficult decision to get an abortion,
which she claimed was the, quote, "worst experience of [her] life."
"It's always on your mind.
And it's one of those like, little scars in life."
Rivera and her mother went through extreme measures to keep the abortion secret.
According to the actress:
"We paid cash, leaving no paper trail, like it was a drug deal."
The physical experience proved to be, quote, "incredibly painful."
Remarkably, Rivera showed up for work the very next day, even though her body would
suffer physical effects for the next few weeks.
Dorsey wouldn't find out about the pregnancy until years later.
The truth actually reignited their relationship.
Still, the emotional wounds never stopped haunting the actress.
She wrote:
"I don't think I ever emotionally healed from the abortion."
Rivera's life has been consistently marred by the tragic death of her castmates, but
it was Cory Monteith's death that was, perhaps, the most painful.
It's no secret that Monteith - who was said to be like a brother to Rivera - had been
struggling with substance abuse issues.
In her memoir, the actress revealed that she and her castmates were shocked when they saw
the star have a drink after years of sobriety.
Monteith would eventually succumb to his vices in July of 2013.
Rivera was dating rapper Big Sean when she got the news of the actor's death.
She wrote:
"I shook Sean awake and told him that Cory had just died.
He just said, 'Oh man, babe, I'm really sorry about that,' and rolled over and went back
to sleep.
I was crying and kept coming in and out of the room as I went out into the hallway to
make phone calls, and he never got out of bed or even so much as sat up and turned on
the light.
This still blows my mind to this day."
Rivera's relationship with Big Sean was speedy, tumultuous, and just about everything tabloids
love in a celebrity relationship - for better and for much, much worse.
According to People, the couple got engaged just six months after meeting on Twitter in
2013.
"Yeah, it was definitely like the classic fairy tale, started on Twitter."
It seemed like true millennial serendipity, but judging by Rivera's memoir, nothing about
this couple was meant to be.
In fact, it doesn't seem like they got along at all.
Rivera even called the rapper, quote, "an incredibly selfish person."
Sean started avoiding Rivera as soon as they got engaged.
At one point, they had been, quote, "fighting for five days straight" while he was traveling.
The rapper had just one day in Los Angeles and didn't want to see his fianceé.
Rivera decided to show up anyway, letting herself in with the key, only to find Ariana
Grande, quote, "sitting cross-legged on the couch listening to music."
She wrote:
"I was starting to see that the realities of a relationship just weren't sexy to a rapper
who wanted to have his cake and not just eat it too but spread frosting all over the place.
(Too much?
Sorry not sorry!)"
But the cheating rumors aren't explicitly what did Rivera's relationship in.
Rather, she was completely blindsided by the end of her engagement.
In her memoir, the actress admitted that the relationship completely devolved over a Rolex.
Big Sean had apparently leant her his watch on their third date, but later allegedly took
it back, quote, "without warning."
Against her better judgement, Rivera blasted him on Twitter, publicly accusing the rapper
of stealing the Rolex because she made more money on Glee.
She wrote:
"Such a tweet did not go unnoticed - even when I realized what I had done and deleted
it as fast as I could.'"
Sure, the tweet was ill-advised, but the way Big Sean called off the wedding was immeasurably
worse.
The star ended things through a statement that was released by his publicist.
Rivera wrote:
"So I learned that I was no longer getting married from THE INTERNET, and at the same
time as the rest of the world [...] Not only were we no longer getting married, but apparently
we weren't even together anymore."
Rivera tied the knot with Ryan Dorsey just three months after Big Sean called off their
engagement.
"He was just, uh, he was kind of always the one."
But this blissful, whirlwind reunion didn't stay blissful for very long.
Though the couple kept the details of their various breakups and makeups rather private,
it's hard to keep things under wraps when the police are involved.
In 2017, Rivera was arrested in West Virginia and charged with domestic battery after an
alleged altercation with Dorsey.
The fight was reportedly ignited when the actress let go of their 2-year-old son's stroller,
with him in it, which then rolled downhill, quote, "approximately five feet" before Dorsey
grabbed it.
Dorsey ended up reportedly calling 911 because Rivera was, quote, "out of control."
The actor also reported minor injuries after, he claimed, the Glee star, quote, "struck
him in the head and face."
Dorsey, who claimed Rivera was acting strange because she'd been drinking, filmed the alleged
incident, but he didn't want to press charges.
He later tweeted:
"This is a difficult time for everyone in the family especially for Naya and I.
This isn't some reality show, this is our life."
Rivera filed for divorce about a week after the incident.
The charges were dismissed a couple of months later.
Glee was Rivera's biggest role to date, but she almost got fired while filming Season
5 after airing her frustrations to a producer.
In her memoir, the actress revealed that it all went down when they were filming "Old
Dogs, New Tricks," the second to last episode of the season.
On that particular day, an unnamed cast member had a full-on meltdown about the animals on
set and, quote, "locked herself in her trailer, and refused to come out."
The incident ended up halting production, and Rivera was fed up.
She ultimately snapped at a producer, telling him:
"If you would kindly get up and handle something - anything - that would be awesome."
The producer - who was clearly frustrated as well - didn't take too kindly to Rivera's
suggestions.
The actress recalled:
"He lost it, and started screaming at me in front of the crew.
'I've been running this show for six years,' he yelled.
Without raising my voice, I responded, 'Yes.
Poorly.'"
It took a summer for the situation to cool down, and Rivera was eventually welcomed back,
but the star was unequivocally fired for a hot minute.
Weeks after Rivera graced headlines yet again for a feud with Lea Michele, the star disappeared
while out boating on Lake Piru with her 4-year-old son, Josey Hollis Dorsey.
Her last tweet, posted the day prior, showed the pair snuggling up, and featured the caption:
"Just the two of us."
According to Us Weekly, Rivera rented out the boat for three hours on Wednesday, July
8, 2020 - but she never returned it.
When it was 30 minutes overdue, a staff member went out to look for her.
They found the boat with Rivera's son sleeping alone inside.
This kicked off a large-scale search and rescue operation that, according to The Los Angeles
Times, included two helicopters, six pontoon boats, and 25 divers.
TMZ reports that Josey told authorities his mother, quote, "jumped in the water... but
didn't come back up."
The lake - which can reach depths of 160 feet depending on the season - is notoriously hazardous
because of strong currents, quote, "deep columns of chilly water," and gusts of wind that can
rock small boats enough to knock unsteady passengers into the water.
The water had just five to nine inches of visibility where Rivera went missing.
The expansive search efforts ended when Rivera's body was recovered on the morning of July 13th, 2020,
according to TMZ, who broke the story ahead of police. She was 33 years old.
Rivera's former Glee co-star Heather Morris posted a heartfelt tribute on her Instagram, saying:
"I speak to you everyday because I know you’re still with me and even though I’m feeling greedy
that we don’t get more time together, I cherish every moment we had and hold it close to my heart."