Naya Rivera’s Ex Ryan Dorsey Reveals What Son Josey Remembers of Her Final Moments

“He doesn’t know a stranger,” Ryan told People in a new interview of Josey, now 9, who said his son not only looks like his mother, he shares so much of her personality. “He is such a happy kid.”

“He’s definitely his mama’s son, because when he doesn’t get the answer he wants, he keeps talking,” Dorsey said. “He likes to talk, and that’s mama for sure.”

Dorsey said that after years of turning down offers to talk about what happened that fateful day on July 8, 2020 — when 4-year-old Josey saw his mother drown while they were swimming just off a rental boat in Lake Piru in Ventura, County, California — he finally feels ready to unpack some of it.

“There’s just so much that happened,” he told People, vividly recalling where he was when he found out Rivera had gone missing. Dorsey said he was in a Ralphs Supermarket at Big Bear Lake, California, where he’d gone for a friend’s birthday, when he got the call.

“I instantly said, ‘What do you mean? She knows how to swim,'” Dorsey recalled. “He said, ‘They jumped in, and Josey got back on, and they’re trying to find Naya.'”

Dorsey said he “collapsed into a pallet of drinks,” immediately fearing “the worst.”

He recalled driving “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.” All he could think about was, “I just wanted to get to Josey.”

Josey was found alone and asleep on the boat, still on the lake, just three hours after his mother had rented it. It would be five more days of search-and-rescue before Rivera’s body was recovered from the waters.

“It was the worst five days of my life,” Dorsey told People. “There was a fear, what if we don’t find her? It was just awful.”

As for what Josey remembers, Dorsey said that more has come back to his son over the years about his final moments with his mother, with Dorsey having to assuage some of his guilt.

Dorsey told the outlet that Josey has said he remembers it being windy and him being worried about getting into the water, with Rivera telling him, “Don’t be silly!”

Josey said that after they had swam around a bit, his mother noticed the boat was drifting away. He said his mom told him to swim back to the boat. He recalls grabbing “the tanks” on the side of it and pulling himself “around the boat,” per Dorsey.

“He said that the last thing she said was his name, and then she went under, and he didn’t see her anymore,” shared Dorsey, tearing up as he told it. “It just rocks my world that he had to witness her last moments.”

“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 added. “I keep reassuring him, ‘Buddy, that rope wasn’t going to be long enough.'”

He said that the detail “still sticks out in [Josey’s] head because he feels like he could have saved her.” As for what Dorsey thinks happened, he said he believes Rivera “just got caught up in a brush — that or a weird undercurrent from the dam.”

Ultimately, he concedes “it was just a freak occurrence,” but at the same time admitted that he can’t help but think that if he’d been there, he could have done something to change the tragic outcome of that day.

“I probably would have jumped in, and I like to think I would’ve saved the day,” he said. “But on the other hand, I think maybe something bad could have happened to both of us. I don’t know.”

Dorsey, who said he lost 40 pounds after Rivera’s death due to stress, thanked her sister Nickayla for moving in for about a year to help take care of Josey while he finished some work responsibilities in Vancouver.

Now, Dorsey is feeling the weight of being a single father, trying to juggle a career as an actor and his responsibilities to Josey. But he’s kept Rivera alive in both of their lives throughout the journey.

“We made this book of memories for Josey that sits by his bed, and during the holidays he was crying looking at it,” he told People. “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.'”

“It’s hard trying to explain things that you can’t really make sense of no matter what age you are,” Dorsey said, adding, “I’m 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.”

He said that moving back to West Virginia two years ago with Josey has made things easier for the father-and-son. He said the expenses of life in Los Angeles left him unable to prepare for Josey’s future.

“It didn’t make sense to stay because Covid changed our industry to where all my auditions were on tape, and I can audition in a garage anywhere,” he explained. “West Virginia is just a completely different place. There’s not much to do, but it feels safe and there’s no traffic.”

He also appreciates the lower cost of living, saying that the illusion that Rivera’s success and his work in television means he’s wealthy just isn’t the reality. “I didn’t leave L.A. because we were just sitting on a bunch of money,” he said.

With an upcoming Apple TV+ project in the works he can’t talk about yet, and other “journeyman” work, Dorsey said he’s still waiting for his “big break as a series regular,” hoping that it’s “going to happen soon.”

“There were so many people who were influential in the business that reached out when Naya died, like, ‘Yeah, we’ll look out for something for you and we’ll get you on something,'” he said. “Then they turned into ghosts. It was disheartening, but it’s fine.”

As for his personal life, Dorsey said that Josey has been pressuring him for years to get out there because he “wants a brother and a stepmom.” Dorsey called the sentiment “sad but sweet,” but feels that asking anyone to sign up for what life with them entails is “a lot.”

Instead, he keeps his focus on Josey and the memory of Rivera. telling the magazine, “I’m trying to be the best parent that I can be and raise a good little man.”