Off The Record

Naya Rivera’s Ex Husband Shared The Tragic Final Words She Said To Her Son Before Drowning

Published on February 13, 2025

For the first time, the late Glee actress Naya Rivera’s ex-husband has spoken out about his sadness, five years after her untimely death.

The celebrity tragically drowned after renting a boat on Lake Piru, California, with their four-year-old kid. Ryan Dorsey, who divorced her two years and one month prior, remembered the last things she said to the youngster before drowning under the waves.

The ‘Santana Lopez’ actress drowned on July 8, 2020, while swimming with her young son, Josey, at the age of just 33.

After being discovered sleeping in a life jacket aboard the rented boat—which lacked an anchor and a flotation device—without his mother, Rivera was reported missing for a number of days.

Five days after she vanished, the on-screen actress’s body was found in a secluded area of the lake. Investigators later concluded that she had given up her life to save her son’s.

As previously mentioned, Rivera’s ex-husband Dorsey, to whom she was married from 2014 to 2018, asked for seclusion in the years after her death in order to protect their shared son.

He hasn’t talked about how the actress’ passing has affected their family until this week.

In an interview with PEOPLE magazine this week, the 41-year-old started out by thinking back to the time he found out his ex-lover was missing. He disclosed that he had been at Ralph’s supermarket when Rivera’s mother, Yolanda, called to let him know she was gone.

“I instantly said, ‘What do you mean? She knows how to swim,'” Dorsey told the publication. “She 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.”

Dorsey continued by disclosing that their nine-year-old son still vividly recalls seeing his mother go under the waves.

“He said that the last thing she said was his name, and then she went under, and he didn’t see her anymore,” he added.

“It just rocks my world that he had to witness her last moments.”

Josey is still tormented by remorse over the idea that his mother traded her life for his, the single father continued.

“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 explained. “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.”

Although he wasn’t present when Rivera perished, Dorsey continued; he thinks he “probably would have jumped in” and “saved the day.”

“But on the other hand, I think maybe something bad could have happened to both of us,” he quickly continued, however. “I don’t know.”