Daveigh Chase’s childhood friend Amy Castle is speaking out for the first time following the former child star’s shocking death at age 35.
“I believe that things absolutely could have been different. Whenever I speak to people about it, they go, ‘It’s so sad, it’s so tragic,’ and I say it is sad, and it is tragic, but also it didn’t have to be this way,” Castle, 36, exclusively told Us Weekly on Wednesday, July 8. “I knew her from [age] 9 to 16, and I can tell you with certainty the friend that I knew would never have wanted her life to go the way it went. No way. I don’t have a shadow of a doubt in my life.”
Chase’s boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, confirmed her death to TMZ on June 17. Hernandez told the outlet that Chase — who starred as Samara in The Ring and voiced Lilo Pelekai in Disney’s animated film Lilo & Stitch — died the previous day after a battle with meningitis and an infection in her blood that led to sepsis. She was 35.
Weeks later, Chase’s official cause of death was ruled as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) with other significant conditions including chronic polysubstance use, per the County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner records exclusively obtained by Us. (Polysubstance use is defined as using more than one drug or substance at the same time or within a short period of time, according to the Cleveland Clinic.)
“I will say from lived experience, and also from observing and learning and witnessing, I don’t think there’s a person on the planet that wakes up and says, ‘I want to become a drug addict.’ I personally believe that the root cause of addiction is trauma,” Castle continued. “And the definition of trauma is something or things, events that happen, and your body and brain don’t know how to make sense of it. It’s something that happens that it’s overwhelming, your body and your brain can’t process as fast as [it’s] happening.”
Castle added that she believes Chase “did not have the support” she needed. (Chase was reportedly living on the streets in Los Angeles before her death.)
“I believe that a lot of the time if a person does not have the support needed to process … that a very understandable coping mechanism can be to compartmentalize or to self-soothe, a lot of times with drugs, [it] can be with food, with sex, with anything that’s going to give your brain dopamine and take you out of what you don’t understand,” she explained.
Castle also shared that learning that Chase died of AIDS “brings a lot of emotions.”
“I just got chills,” she told Us. “That is so manageable in 2026. I get very, very angry knowing that that’s how my friend passed away.”
Chase and Castle formed a fast friendship as young actors who shared the same manager when they were starting out in the early 2000s. The pair were close in age and went on auditions together.
“I actually attended the premiere of Lilo & Stitch with her and her mother,” Castle recalled. “We were really close, and I remembered back then knowing, ‘My gosh, this is my best friend,’ because we were also homeschooled [child] actors. That’s a very specific niche.”
Castle added that Chase was “like an anchor” for her during that point of her life.
“She was very generous, very kind,” she shared. “I have so many positive, beautiful memories about her, who she was, separate from any of the roles that she did.”
Castle gushed that Chase had a “natural” talent for acting and was a “beaming light of pure spirit” off screen.
“She was just beautiful and kind, and not jealous. [She was] not a competitive person, which I’m sure that anybody that’s been in this business for any duration of time, it becomes very evident that there is a lot of competition,” she said. “With that being the world that we were in, and to find her being so genuine and kind, I knew back then that she was a very special person, and [being] that special person is why she worked.”
Castle and Chase gradually lost touch over the years with the Passions alum revealing that she last saw Chase in person in September 2006 when they ran into each other at Universal City Walk in Los Angeles.
Since Chase’s death on June 16, Castle has been working on an initiative called Daveigh’s Law, which aims to help young SAG-AFTRA members access support resources,
“The purpose of Daveigh’s Law is at the same time that you become a SAG-AFTRA member [when] you begin working [in the] union in this business as a minor, you also become part of [a] support [system] where there would be texts and calls and a hotline,” she told Us. “Since I have launched this [on] Instagram and purchased the domain name I have been made aware that there are some services that I didn’t even know of that would have been great, not necessarily from SAG itself, but from the Young Arts Academy. I’m thinking, ‘How great,’ but also I know that Daveigh did not know about any of that.”
“It is crucial that we bridge the gap between child actor and adult human,” she added.
The grassroots effort is still in its early stages, but it’s already gaining momentum.
“Any kind of substantial change isn’t going to happen overnight. And I’m so 100% committed to this for the long haul, and not just for [Chase], but for every person that started working as a child that didn’t have the support or was not protected,” said Castle.
“And unfortunately in many cases they were not protected from their own parents. That’s the piece that gets me right in the heart, because children and parents in this business as a whole, there are too many times that parents are living vicariously through their children, wanting success, fame, money, whatever it is. And while I believe most of those parents, when asked, would say that they have their child’s best interest at heart, I believe that they believe that, but I do not believe that it’s really what’s in the best interest of the child.”
In the days after Chase’s tragic passing, Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert opened up about working with Chase on a TV pilot over 20 years ago. She wrote, in part, “She was bubbly, sweet and professional. But there was something else there, a push or need to perform … for her parents. I have been around a lot of child actors, myself included, which makes us all a part of a big multigenerational tribe. As a consequence, I’ve also been around a lot of stage parents. Many child actors grow up just fine, whether they stay in ‘the business’ or not. That is 100% due to really solid, wise parenting.”
Whether the Big Love star received the parenting she needed, Castle recalled, “I will say I saw things that I was not comfortable with. And I wish that more people believed a 12-year-old.”
But the young friends never discussed it.
“I never got to talk about it,” she said. “I will say, I was never in a situation with her where I felt that I was in danger or that she was ever in danger. It was more just like situations where parents are not really emotionally attuned to their children’s needs, and as far as I know, that’s not illegal. I just thought at my 12-year-old judgment this should not be going on.”
Castle says her friend’s story is important.
“Yes, it’s the entertainment industry. Yes, it’s a child star. Yes, could the parents have done things differently. It’s all of that, but at its core, this is a human story,” she said.
“To anyone that has somebody in their life who’s struggling with an addiction, even if they feel like they’re too far gone, as long as that person is still alive, they’re not too far gone. If you have a loved one and you care about them, don’t give up.”
