Naya Rivera Talks Cory Monteith’s Drinking In New Book: ‘We All Just Accepted It’

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We can’t even imagine what Naya Rivera and her ‘Glee’ castmates went through when Cory Monteith died in 2013, but in her new book, the actress gives us a bit of an idea. She also looks back on her friend’s downfall with alcohol and drugs before his tragic passing, and opens up about the regret she feels for not trying to stop his habits.

In her memoir Sorry Not Sorry, Naya Rivera, 29, reveals that Cory Monteith had always been open with the Glee cast about his struggles with drugs and alcohol, and says for most of the time she knew him, he didn’t drink. That all changed at his birthday party one year, when he had a cocktail in front of the group.

“He noticed that we noticed,” she writes. “He explained that he wanted to be able to drink in moderation, that he could do it and be just like everybody else. He seemed calm and confident about it, so we all just accepted it. To be honest, I don’t think many of us really understood how addiction worked, nor did we fully realize the extent of his former addiction.”

Naya found out about Cory’s death while she was in London with her then-boyfriend, Big Sean, and admits that filming the Glee tribute episode for him was one of the hardest moments of her life. And, still, there’s always that nagging feeling about whether or not she could’ve done something.

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“I doubt I’m alone in feeling a lot of regret about his death,” she says. “Since he died, a lot of us have spent time wondering and talking about what would have happened if someone had stepped in or confronted him about what was going on. Or what if he’d been trying to talk to someone about what was going on and just thought no one cared? Like, maybe that one time when it was just the two of us walking out to our cars, maybe if I would have just walked a little bit slower and hadn’t been in such a hurry to get home, maybe he would have seen it as an opportunity to bring something up. You can drive yourself crazy like that, because no number of ifs will ever make anything different.”

HollywoodLifers, what do you think of Naya’s story about Cory? Are you shocked that the Glee cast stood by while he continued to drink?