by Naya Rivera
Della Reese, who played his wife, was the first to figure out that something really was happening. She rushed over, leaned down to him, and heard him saying, “Get my wife—get my wife.” Della stood up and started screaming, which jolted everyone in the room into action. The assistant director yelled for someone to get an ambulance, and my mom, who had been sitting and watching rehearsals with Redd’s wife, tried desperately to calm her down and assure her that everything was going to be okay.
I didn’t move, though. I’d been taught to stay on my mark, so that’s what I did. My dad happened to be on set that day. Finally, he noticed that I was still standing there like a statue, so he ran over and scooped me up. He and my mom took me up to my dressing room, where they set me down with some coloring books and instructions not to move—again—while they went back downstairs and tried to help.
I hadn’t really known my own grandparents, so for all intents and purposes Redd was my grandpa. I was way too young to process it at the time, but now, when I look back, I realize how special and unique it was for the cast of a TV show to have such offscreen camaraderie and genuine love. The whole cast and crew followed Redd’s ambulance to the hospital, and we sat there, his TV family and his real family, all mixed together in the waiting room, praying and trying to comfort one another. When the doctor came out to tell us that Redd had passed, he delivered the news to the entire group.
As you can imagine, everyone took it really hard. Redd was such a presence wherever he went. He’d started his career in stand-up, and he was one of those people who could turn anything into a stage and anyone into an audience. He was the first person I knew who died, and I still remember his funeral—which was held in Las Vegas—very vividly. It was open casket. He looked very kingly in a white suit, and it was a fitting tribute to a man who liked to live large.
Della sang “What a Wonderful World,” a song that can make me teary eyed to this day. My mom had become especially close to Redd and his wife, Ka, so she took it really hard. She’d bring me to visit Redd’s grave, where Ka would give me a cigar (one of Redd’s favorite things) and tell me I could give Redd a present. We’d dig a little hole, stick the cigar in it, and then she would light it. We’d watch the smoke curl up and into the air, and in my five-year-old brain I imagined him six feet underground, smoking away in that white suit and being just the same as he always was.
After Redd passed, the producers briefly brought in Jackée to play Della’s sister and try to keep the show going, but as my mom said, it just wasn’t the same without Redd. The Royal Family came to an end after just one season.
Glee would eventually be filmed on the same Paramount lot where we shot The Royal Family, and every day, on my way to the set, I’d walk past the day care where my mom would drop off my baby brother before she and I would head to work. I love the Paramount lot, and returning to work there so many years later felt like a homecoming. It made me think about my TV beginnings, and Redd, a lot. He was one of the first people to really believe in me, and I’ve always wanted to make him proud. Someday I’m gonna take that fox and a Ouija board over to Stage 16 and see if I can say hello. I’d love to tell him what I’m up to, and make sure he knows how much I loved that gold-lamé bandeau top.
SLAYING IT IN THE EARLY NINETIES
At this point in my life, I didn’t know that much about school, but I knew that I liked acting better. I was around adults all the time, I was getting attention (see above, re Tupac), and I got to wear fancy clothes and do silly things that would have gotten me in trouble had I tried to do them at home.
After The Royal Family was canceled and I wasn’t going to an on-set tutor anymore, my parents enrolled me in the local public elementary school. At night, after I finished my homework, my mom would make me get my lines for whatever audition I had coming up and go into her room. When I was super little, Mom would just repeat everything over and over, and have me repeat it back to her. Even once I could read, though, she still made me go off book every time I went into a casting. This meant I couldn’t walk in a room and read my lines from a piece of paper, even if that’s what everyone else was doing; I had to memorize them. To this day, I can still learn my lines super fast, and can recall conversations I had months ago nearly verbatim (my poor husband, right?).
For the first sixteen years of my life, my mom was the only acting coach I had. She was damn good at it too. She’d give me pointers on delivery and body language, like, “Okay, but next time put your hand on your hip when you say that word,” or she’d demonstrate the facial expressions to make when I was supposed to get people to laugh, or when I was supposed to look mad or unhappy.
In a lot of ways, my mom and I had a very adult relationship, but at the core I was still a kid. Sometimes our nightly sessions of running lines would end in a screaming match, with me crying because I just wanted to play, or frustrated because I didn’t think she was listening to me. I also hated some auditions, especially those kid cattle calls for commercials that involved several hours of standing in line.
Eventually I got savvy enough to bargain when I knew that an audition would be particularly annoying, which was how I ended up with an all-white bunny named Duchess. Ah, Duchess—I was super into her for, like, the first two days, then totally forgot about her. Eventually her tiny bunny water bottle proved to be no match for a summer day in Valencia, and she succumbed to heatstroke. After Duchess, Mom wised up, and my rewards were only of the inanimate variety.
The first thing I booked after The Royal Family was a guest spot on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. While I hated commercial auditions, I took television auditions very seriously. I remember that I was barely out of that casting when I burst into tears. I was convinced that I’d done a horrible job and wasn’t going to get it.
Then we got a page from Arletta, and I went from midmeltdown to screaming with joy into a pay phone. The role I landed was only for one episode, and one scene, which wasn’t even with Will Smith, but I was on set long enough for him to call me cute.
My mom and I were sitting on some stairs, rehearsing my lines, and were (unintentionally!!) blocking the entrance to his dressing room. He came by and asked us to move but also introduced himself and called me pretty.
I beamed. “Wow, Mom! That’s the Fresh Prince!”
So yeah—Tupac and Will Smith? I was totally slaying in the early nineties.
After this, I booked a recurring role on Family Matters. I have to be honest—I think this was when I reached my prime in terms of my physical appearance. I played Gwendolyn, who was the seven-year-old love interest of Little Richie, and the costume department really knew what it was doing. Gwendolyn had the best hair and the best outfits! Her hair was always half-up/half-down and full of scrunchies. Each of her outfits was made up of at least seventeen articles of clothing—it was all about the layers. She’d be in leggings under a skirt with a long-sleeved shirt under a short-sleeved shirt with a bandanna around her neck, and then they’d top it all off with something like a pair of little yellow socks and red Chuck Taylors.
On a Valentine’s Day episode, they paired a red dress with a leopard-print coat and a big red flower in my hair—the look beats any red-carpet ensemble I’ve worn to this day. Another highlight was when I got to drive a battery-powered Barbie Jeep. This made a huge impression on me. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and I loved it so much that it (unfortunately) influenced my taste in real cars when I finally got my driver’s license more than ten years later.
Richie wasn’t just my on-screen love; offscreen I was convinced I was going to marry him. He could dance and he had the best Jheri curl on TV—what more could a girl want?
I thought he looked like Michael Jackson, and I was obsessed. I’d call his house to talk to him, and Richie and I would tie up the phone lines for hours. As to what our conversations were actually about? Beats me. The pinnacle of our romance was the Family Matters wrap party. As all the adults w
ere getting drunk, and the older kids were being cool, Richie and I burned up the dance floor until we were sweaty—him with his Michael Jackson moves and me with the running man, which I had mastered so well that it should’ve been in the special-skills section of my résumé.
Alas—sometimes young love is just not meant to last, and I have no idea where Richie is these days. Nor, if I’m being honest, can I even remember his real name.
My on-screen roles definitely led to some offscreen perks. Michael Jackson’s niece was also an actor, and we were on several auditions together. Over time, our moms became friends, enough so that I was invited to her birthday party at Neverland Ranch. I was still too young to really understand what was so special about it, but my mom was freaking out—even though she wasn’t allowed to come with me (the girl’s mom assured us that there were chaperones, and that Michael was not one of them).
The day of the party, we all met at a central location, where we would be taken to the ranch. Everyone else on the bus was like twelve or thirteen, but I was a freaking baby—small enough that I was still wearing white tights! Nicole Richie was one of the other kids on the bus, and when she saw a five-year-old climb on board by herself, Nicole and her friend took me under their wing and let me sit with them. The bus ride was so long that I got sleepy and laid down and took a nap in Nicole’s lap. When I woke up, I saw that I’d drooled all over her leg.
Once we were at Neverland, we rode the rides and watched a movie in a full-size theater. I remember walking up to a concession stand that was filled with popcorn and candy. I had planned on just drooling at the snacks from behind the glass because I didn’t have any money, but then the guy working the counter said, “Do you want anything? Everything is free here.” If this had been a movie, we would have cut to a trippy echo sequence at that moment: “Everything is free . . . Everything is free . . .” I’d never heard anything so glorious in my brief little life. I gobbled up Sour Patch Kids and Raisinets and Twizzlers, and then stayed awake for the entire bus ride home, all hopped up on sugar.
THE FIRST ETHNIC DOROTHY (AT MY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, AT LEAST)
I booked one of the most important roles of my career, far away from Hollywood, when I played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. No, not on Broadway, but even better: at Valencia Valley Elementary School. The school put on The Wizard of Oz every year, and the teacher in charge was this biggish woman who always wore oversize muumuus and had long gray hair. During story time, she’d make kids rub her bunions. I was totally disgusted by it at the time, and now that I look back on it, I wonder—how did this bitch not get fired?
But that’s an aside: The Wizard of Oz was her passion, and she was obsessed with making it as good as it could be. The year that I could audition, she was practically salivating at the chance to have a professional actress in the lead role.
She went through the dog and pony show of holding auditions, but I knew I was going to get it—hello, I had credits! I was such a little monster back then that I’m surprised I didn’t walk in and hand her my résumé. Afterward, I stood in a circle of girls who had tried out for the part and put on a show of asking everyone who they thought was going to get it. Even at the time, I knew that was bratty behavior—but did it anyway.
Diva antics aside, the show was a hit—in the video you can see me hitting every mark and making sure I enunciate every line. My parents were just as proud then as they were when I landed a role on national television—my mom even stayed up the night before, covering my shoes with gold glitter and red spray paint.
The Wizard of Oz was definitely the highlight of my elementary school years. Even though I was still just in the single digits, it was pretty obvious that school and I were not destined to get along. I got suspended twice before I even made it to fifth grade.
My family moved a lot, and in total I went to three different elementary schools. I was never nervous about being the new kid, though, and always had a pretty easy time making friends. In second grade, I met my friend Madison, who is still my best friend to this day. Other friendships didn’t have quite the same staying power.
In fourth grade, I befriended this girl Sarah who was a total tomboy and kind of a bully. One day she decided to spin me around by my hair. I screamed and screamed for her to stop, trying to keep up before she ripped my ponytail completely off my head. When she wouldn’t stop, I resorted to more drastic measures and bit the hell out of her arm. It was a little bit of real-life foreshadowing of the Glee episode where Santana gets her ass kicked by Lauren and resorts to biting. That aside—somehow I got suspended, and that bitch Sarah got off scot-free, even though she’d started it!
Unlike the creepy bunion teacher, not every teacher at the schools I attended was stoked about having an actress in their midst. At one school, it was clear from day one that the principal had it out for me and didn’t consider acting a worthwhile pursuit. My parents were constantly fighting with the school to get it to recognize my on-set tutor hours, and you could see the look of disdain on the principal’s face every time my mom would try to talk to her about how I was going to miss a few more days of school because of shooting. Like anyone learns anything in elementary school anyway.
One day I was sitting in class, minding my own business, when I was suddenly called into the principal’s office.
“Naya,” she said, with all the seriousness of a counterterrorism agent interrogating a member of ISIS. “Do you recognize this note?” She slid a piece of paper across the table, and, sure enough, I did recognize it. It was a note I’d written to my friend Kate about a boy in our class. “Johnny smells so bad,” I’d scrawled in pencil across a piece of wide-ruled paper. “Sometimes I want him to die.”
When I nodded, she sat back smugly in her chair. “This,” she said, “is a very serious matter.”
She called in my mom and announced that I was getting suspended yet again, but this time for making a death threat against a fellow student!
My mom is not the kind of woman to take anything lying down, but I think at this point she’d had enough of this school and decided she wasn’t wasting any more time on this woman than she already had.
She just shrugged, told me to gather up my stuff, and we went home. It was the one time in my life that I didn’t get in trouble with my parents for getting in trouble at school. Instead, I played in the park, watched tons of Nickelodeon, and had a pretty nice little vacation.
Even as a child, I knew that acting was a job, and I liked that feeling of responsibility. I liked to work hard and felt fulfilled knowing that I was good at something. Sometimes this work ethic leaked into other areas of my life. I was competitive and didn’t just play—I couldn’t understand how other kids could do something and not try their absolute best. For example, between the ages of six and ten, I was an absolute beast when it came to handball. How this became my passion du jour, I have no idea, but I practiced at home so I could dominate the playground handball scene at recess. I was the champ of the court, and I got real mean when other people didn’t take it as seriously as I did.
In my grade there was this one girl, Melissa, who was rumored to have been a crack baby or something, and she had a deformed hand. When we played handball, we turned into a bunch of trash-talking seven-year-olds, and Melissa made the mistake of calling me poor.
I turned around and yelled, “Oh yeah?! Why are you playing handball, anyway, when you only have one hand?!” Then I went right back to whacking the shit outta that ball. I later apologized to Melissa, because as soon as I walked off the court, the other kids were like, “Yo, Naya, that’s messed up,” and as the sweat dried off my forehead, I had to admit that, yes, it was really fucked up. So lesson learned: not all is fair in the name of love and handball.
BEING A CHILD ACTOR—AND LIVING TO TELL THE TALE
The Royal Family only lasted one season, but I really believe that it had all the elements of a great sitcom and could have been as successful
as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or Family Matters if Redd hadn’t passed away.
When this happened, my family obviously mourned Redd’s death, but we also mourned the passing of the show. That kind of opportunity doesn’t come along very often, and when I was cast on the show, we saw it as the beginning of a long career—it was tough to watch it kind of sputter to a halt less than a year later. I could have been the Tatyana Ali of my day, and picking up residuals forever.
In retrospect, though, I think that everything happened for me with my career at the perfect time. If I’d been a successful kid actor, I’d probably be way more crazy than I am now, and doing fucked-up things with those residual checks!
I think it’s hard for child actors to make the transition to adulthood (on-screen and offscreen), because they have everything they want at such an early age. You get tons of attention and people are always telling you how great you are, not to mention all the material perks. Even though you’re a little kid, people turn you into the boss. This happens especially when the kid becomes the breadwinner in the family, and I think that is hard for the kids and the parents—how are you going to discipline a kid when they’re the one making all the money?
Also, when you’re super successful as a little kid, you’re not mentally developed enough to understand that things could change at any time. You just think your life is always going to be this cool—then, all of a sudden, you hit that awkward stage in life, your roles start to dry up, and you’re back to being a normal kid even though you’re totally unprepared for normalcy.