Daveigh Chase’s manager speaks out about her past struggles, says she was missing for over 10 years before her death

Key Points

• Daveigh Chase’s manager, John Ryan Jr., tells Entertainment Weekly that she disappeared in 2015, more than 10 years before her death at 35.

• Ryan says he discovered that Chase was missing after she blew off a meeting with Rob Reiner.

• The actress’ manager says he was in the midst of setting up a documentary about her disappearance when he received the news of her death.

Daveigh Chase’s friend and former manager is speaking out after the actress’ tragic death at age 35 on Tuesday.

John Ryan Jr., a Hollywood producer who represented the Lilo & Stitch star in the last stage of her career, tells Entertainment Weekly about his memories of the late actress, as well as his efforts to find her after she disappeared over a decade ago.

Ryan says that he first met Chase when he was about 24 in the mid-2000s when he owned Element, a Los Angeles nightclub that was frequented by Hollywood stars.

“Daveigh was coming there a lot, and she became kind of like the little sister of the place,” he recalls. “We all kind of looked out for her. She had had some problems with her mother,” Ryan says, further stating that they had helped her get her own house set up in Toluca Lake.

Ryan — who now executive-produces films like Good Burger 2 and the upcoming Kenan & Kel Meet Frankenstein under the Artists for Artists studio he cofounded with Kenan Thompson — says that he began managing Chase’s career as a favor.

“She’d asked that we help manage her because she was unhappy with some things, and we wanted to make sure she was in good hands, so we took care of her, and helped her get agents,” he explains.

“She was one of my best friends. Me, her, my wife, and her ex were like, ‘We’re gonna travel the world together,’ so she was a close friend of mine. So, we just kind of managed her, without even taking commission, just make sure little sister was safe, ’cause I knew she had a f—ed up childhood,” Ryan tells EW.

Ryan says that Chase was receiving “big offers” for high-profile projects in the final days of her career, but she gravitated toward smaller films.

“She really just wanted to get back to her Donnie Darko roots and do more indie, Sundance-y stuff,” he explains, noting that she was working on film sets just three weeks before her disappearance. Her final film projects were Jack Goes Home and American Romance, both of which were released in 2016.

Ryan last saw Chase face to face in November 2015, and says that he discovered that she was missing after she blew off a meeting with a Hollywood titan.

“Rob Reiner had called us and had a role for her, and she never showed up,” he remembers. “He said, ‘I’ve got a role I want to talk to her about — have her come in!’ And then when we followed up the next day with him, like, ‘Hey, how did [the meeting] go?’ They were like, ‘She never showed.’ And then we were like, ‘Okay, something’s up.'”

Ryan says that Chase “lost her phone,” so “none of us had a way to get a hold of her” after she missed the meeting with Reiner.

“She was staying with us a lot, my wife and I, so we had her passport, and we had her clothes,” he says. “At first, I thought she was kidnapped or something, and then we started putting two and two together.”

Chase’s former manager explains that he was in a group chat with the actress’ sisters and friends, who would periodically contact one another to check in on her sobriety and health.

“She liked to drink now and then — it was more drinking than heavy drugs,” Ryan recalls. “So it was just like, ‘All right, well, you know, she’s a kid who started drinking, keep an eye on her,’ and we all kind of had an eye on her.”

Ryan says that he helped Chase into “a couple rehabs back in the day,” but that her circle of friends wasn’t overly concerned about her sobriety at the time of her disappearance. “She was good,” he remembers. “She was sober [for] a while before she went missing … everything was fine. None of us thought she would go back on anything.”

He says that Chase stopped contacting her entire circle of friends and family simultaneously in 2015, which was alarming, but also not completely unprecedented, as she had a history of disappearing for “a couple weeks” at a time before reemerging to continue her career.

“She was very private and not Hollywood, so [she] would be like, ‘Hey, like, I’m gonna go sit in the desert’ or ‘I’m gonna go hide in my house in Vegas for a couple months and just get away from Hollywood,'” he recalls. “Because she was such an introvert, it wouldn’t be surprising if she didn’t leave her house for five months, and she just watched movies with her cats.”

Because of her history of disappearing, Ryan and Chase’s other friends assumed that the Big Love actress would return at some point, which is why they never filed a formal missing person report with the police.

“We called, we went down and told [the police],” he says. “But because of her history, we just assumed she’d show up.”

Eventually, Ryan and Chase’s loved ones began to hear “rumblings” about people spotting the actress in various locations.

“There was enough every year of, like, ‘Oh, she’s in Van Nuys, she got in trouble doing this, like, she’s floating around.’ But there wasn’t ever really, like, a missing person report or anything filed, because she was kind of missing on her own will.”

Ryan notes that after she broke contact with her inner circle, she occasionally made headlines — TMZ reported that she was arrested after riding in a stolen car in February 2017, and that she was questioned by authorities after dropping a dying man off at a hospital in November of the same year.

Ryan says that he “started hearing some bad stuff” about Chase’s status about five years ago, and that about six months ago, he received a video of her in Los Angeles’ Skid Row. “I ran down there, and by the time I went down there, she had already left,” he says. “We’ve been looking for her ever since. We’ve had private eyes on it.”

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When he received the news that Chase had died following complications from meningitis and a blood infection, Ryan was in the midst of setting up a documentary project that would have chronicled the search for the missing actress, tentatively titled Finding Lilo. He explains why he didn’t previously go public with the news of Chase’s disappearance.

“I didn’t think it’s my story to tell,” he says. “I didn’t want to put my little sister on blast. We had hopes she’d come back, and everyone would’ve just assumed she’s been retired these last 10 years. But once I started hearing things like Skid Row and all that, then it was like, ‘Okay, now we’re calling all cars.'”

He adds, “Once I got video of her, and how bad she looked, I said, ‘We need to bring the public in on this. I don’t want to protect the brand anymore. I want to protect the girl.'”

The documentary was intended to help get the word out about Chase’s disappearance.

“We wanted the world to know, like, ‘Hey, this girl that you dress up as for Halloween has been missing for 10 years, and we need the internet’s help finding her,” Ryan explains. “Now we’re gonna spin it and make it a documentary celebrating her life.”

Ryan remembers Chase as a luminous personality who stood out from the Hollywood crowd. “She was the sweetest girl on the planet — the greatest celebrity I ever had the chance to work with,” he says. “She was just so kind.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.

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