Tahj Mowry honors ex-love Naya Rivera on anniversary of passing
"Smart Guy" star Mowry, who dated Rivera for four years, shared a photo of the former couple on his Instagram page.
Celebrities paid tribute on Thursday to late actress Naya Rivera, who tragically drowned in Lake Piru, just north of Los Angeles, one year ago.
The Glee actress, 33, had gone out on an afternoon boat ride with her son, Josey, who is now nearly 6 years old. Her body was found five days after their vessel was discovered with the boy inside.
Former child star Tahj Mowry, who dated Rivera for four years, shared a photo of the pair on his Instagram page to remember the tragedy’s anniversary, along with dates of Rivera’s birth and death: January 12, 1987-July 8, 2020.
In an recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, he said he believes Rivera is “in a better place.”
“Out of the utmost love and respect for her family, it’s always hard for me to even speak about how I feel about it because it’s nowhere near the pain that her mother, her sister, her brother, her father, her ex-husband, her son, had to deal with and are still dealing with,” he told the outlet.
“My love and respect goes out to them above all,” said Mowry, “but I’m good, and she’s in a better place. … You know what I mean? So that is where I can find the joy and the peace.”
Rivera wrote about Mowry in her 2016 memoir, Sorry Not Sorry, sharing that he was her first boyfriend. He reflected on many of the things he loved about her in his interview with ET.
“She was so strong, she was hilarious, oh my God, and so talented, so talented,” he said. “Her voice always was the best I had ever heard.”
When Rivera went missing last July, Mowry wrote a heartbreaking post on Instagram about the actress where he wrote, in part, that he will always think of her.
“No woman has ever measured up what you gave me or how you made me feel,” Mowry wrote to her then. “I’ve never liked to admit it but I have never stopped loving you. A part of me always wished for the day where God would bring us back together to be what we dreamt we could have been.”
He told ET he has “so much respect for her family.”
“I still am in communication with them,” maintained Mowry, “so I just want to make sure I’m respectful of that and what her family is going through. She was definitely my first everything. I think subconsciously it’s why I never really date like that because no one really ever … I know someday someone might, but it’s hard to measure up to the type of girl and woman she was.”
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