LOS ANGELES - Heather Morris, who played the best-friend-turned-wife of Naya Rivera's character in television musical comedy Glee (2009 to 2015), paid tribute to her late friend with a video on Tuesday (July 21).
Rivera's body was found on July 13 after she disappeared during a boat trip with her four-year-old son out in Lake Piru, California.
In the clip on Instagram, the 33-year-old actress is dancing to Rivera's song, Radio Silence (2019). They both played high school cheerleaders in Glee.
Morris opened up on the loss of her friend: "Grieving looks very different(sic) on everyone... but one thing's for certain: I've felt it's hard to feel joy or keep busy when mourning without thinking that you're not honouring that person or you're forgetting about them."
But her husband Taylor Hubbell reminded her that "honouring someone can mean you're enjoying your life FOR them".
Morris said the media attention garnered by Rivera's disappearance and death - her body was found five days after she went missing - had led to her amassing a million Instagram followers.
She wrote: "At first I was resentful because I gained them from a tragedy, but after giving it a breath.. . I realised you all have just surrounded me with love and support."
So she was paying tribute to Rivera with "her music and her voice that will forever be my favourite".
Actor Chris Colfer, who played Kurt Hummel, a classmate of Rivera's character, also remembered his former co-star in an essay published in Variety magazine on Tuesday.
The 30-year-old wrote: "I'm not sure anyone on Earth could give Naya Rivera the tribute she deserves." In the days following her death, he had been "wondering if Naya was even real or if she was just a dream all along".
On her dry humour, he penned: "On particularly rough days of filming, you might find her outside enjoying a cigarette in her bright red cheerleading uniform. She would raise an invisible glass and say, 'To being role models!' or 'City of dreams, huh?'
Rivera had, according to authorities, summoned the last of her strength to save her son before her fatal drowning.
"She spent hours telling us what she was going to name her kids, how she was going to dress them and all the free babysitting she'd bamboozle out of us," Colfer wrote. "Naya was an extraordinary mother until the very end."
He ended the essay with a quote from Rivera: "No matter the year, circumstance, or strife, every day you're alive is a blessing. Make the most of today and every day you are given. Tomorrow is not promised."
