Naya Rivera’s father opens up about ‘heartbreaking’ final FaceTime call

The Glee actor died in a tragic boating accident in July 2020, aged 33

Naya Rivera at the LA premiere of ‘Judy’ on 19 September 2019 in Beverly Hills, California (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

Naya Rivera’s father George has opened up about his final FaceTime call with his daughter on the day she died, calling it “just heartbreaking” in a new interview with People.

Glee actor Rivera died on 8 July, 2020, in a tragic boating accident, aged 33.

Her father has now revealed that she called him earlier that day to ask him for advice after renting a pontoon boat.

“She would always bounce stuff off me,” said George Rivera, 64. “And she wanted to go swimming with Josey [her son] out in the middle of the lake.”

He strongly advised his daughter against doing so as the boat she’d rented didn’t have an anchor. “I could see that the wind was blowing and my stomach was just cringing,” recalled Rivera. “I kept telling her, ‘Don’t get out of the boat! Don’t get out of the boat! It will drift away when you’re in the water.’”

After the call cut out after a few minutes, Mr Rivera said he “had this bad feeling that was just killing me”.

Just hours later, Rivera’s four-year-old son Josey was found alone on the boat as it floated on Lake Piru. Rivera’s body was retrieved five days later from a remote part of the lake by search and rescue divers from Ventura County.

A report by the Ventura County Medical Examiner found that Rivera had drowned after exhausting herself while struggling to get Josey back into the boat after the pair went swimming.

“It’s still pretty much a big blur of pain almost a year later,” her father told People. “Things are slowly coming a little more into focus, but I don’t know if I’ll ever find closure from this. I miss her every day.”