Naya Rivera, a singer and actress who played a gay cheerleader on the hit TV musical comedy Glee, was found dead on Monday in a Southern California lake. She was 33.
Rivera’s body was discovered six days after she disappeared on Lake Piru, where her son, Josey, was found July 8 alone on a boat the two had rented, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said. The Sheriff’s Office confirmed that the body was Rivera’s.
Rivera began acting at a young age, but she rose to national attention playing a lesbian teen on Glee, which aired from 2009 until 2015 on Fox. She is survived by her parents, Yolanda and George; a younger brother, Mychal; a sister, Nickayla; and her 4-year-old son.
Naya Rivera was a fierce talent with so much more to do and this is such a terrible tragedy. We are forever grateful for the indelible contribution she made to Glee, from the first episode to the last,” said a statement from 20th Century Fox TV and Fox Entertainment.
A native of Santa Clarita, California, Rivera began acting at 4, appearing in such series as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Family Matters and The Bernie Mac Show.
As a teen, she struggled with an eating disorder and had breast implants put in at 18 (“a confidence thing, not a sexual thing,” she would later write in her autobiography).
After Glee, Rivera sought success in film and music. She made her feature film debut in 2014’s At the Devil’s Door, playing a woman caught in the middle of supernatural events, and released the single Sorry in 2013 featuring rapper Big Sean, a one-time fiance.
She and actor Ryan Dorsey were married in 2014 and their son, Josey, was born in 2015. She called her young son my greatest success, and I will never do any better than him.
Rivera’s death is the latest death in a tragic arc of Glee actors. Monteith died in 2013 exactly seven years to the day after Rivera’s body was identified from a toxic mix of alcohol and heroin, and Rivera’s ex-boyfriend Mark Salling, who played a jock on the series, killed himself in 2018 after pleading guilty to child pornography charges.
In the preface to her autobiography, Rivera wrote that motherhood had changed her life and given it perspective. She said she was braver, too. (AP)