Naya Rivera was still a budding child star on "The Royal Family" when she first learned about death. According to Vulture, Rivera played Hillary, the youngest granddaughter of co-star Redd Foxx. Despite their age gap, the two were very close in real life. On an episode of "The Arsenio Hall Show," Foxx pointed to Rivera in the audience, saying, "She's four years old, but actually she's 40."

As two regulars on "The Royal Family," they spent a lot of time bonding on set too. Tragically, Foxx suffered a heart attack one day while reciting lines with Rivera, and the young star watched as it all played out. As quoted by Vulture, in Rivera's 2016 book "Sorry Not Sorry," she recalls, "[A]ll of a sudden he kind of slumped over and fell to the floor." The cast headed to the hospital, along with Foxx's family, and the actress wrote they were "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."

The experience was undoubtedly traumatic for the young actress. Years later, Rivera recalled the experience on a radio show, "It was really weird because I was, like, five and a half, and I got rushed upstairs and I didn't know what was going on. And now, looking back on it, I'm like, that's freaky ... I watched a legend die."