(Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File)
Tahj Mowry is remembering his ex Naya Rivera leading up to the one-year anniversary of her tragic passing.
Mowry paid tribute to the late Glee actor during an interview with Glamour which was released on Wednesday. In the interview, he called Rivera his “first celebrity crush” and said that the news of her passing last year “was really, really rough.” The two co-starred on the sitcom Smart Guy together and dated between 2000 to 2004.
“I have so much respect for her family,” he shared. “I still am in communication with them, 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.”
Mowry also admitted that he still has a hard time talking about Rivera. “It’s a hard thing to talk about, because to think about her mother and her ex-husband and her child and her sister and her brother…the height of what they went through is times a thousand,” he said.
“I almost feel like I can’t even talk about my feelings because they don’t even measure up to the pain that they went through and are still going through. But yes, much love to her entire family-her brother, her sister, her child, and her ex-husband as well.”
Rivera passed at the age of 33 in July 2020 after disappearing during a trip to a California lake with her 4-year-old son. She was confirmed dead after a five-day search.