LOS ANGELES—Veteran gay adult star Tyler Roberts passed away on December 2, friends confirmed Sunday.
Roberts died in the hospital in Miami after battling heart, liver and kidney failure, among other ailments. He was 34.
Tyler had more than 100 screen credits since his debut in 2008, including three dozen outings for RawFuckClub, almost two dozen performances for Dark Alley Media and multiple scenes for studios such as Men.com, Falcon, Hot House, Noir Male and Treasure Island, among others.
He received a 2023 GayVN Awards nomination for Best Group Sex Scene for “Meet Market 2” (RawFuckClub/Dark Alley Media) for his scene with Boomer Banks, Owen Hawk, Jayden Jaxx, Cain Marko, Tarzan Top & Jack Vidra.
According to a GoFundMe campaign launched on Nov. 12 to help Roberts and his family with his medical expenses, the popular star had been on vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., following Palm Springs Pride when his kidneys failed and he was hospitalized in critical condition for more than three weeks.
Roberts’ boyfriend, Aaron Thomas, who was with him Palm Springs, posted a tribute to him on Twitter Saturday.
“I am so heartbroken to share that my love @XXXTylerRoberts passed away yesterday,” Thomas wrote on Twitter. “His family and I are grieving as Eric left a huge space behind that can’t easily be fixed. Lead with love and tell everyone you can you love them as if it’s the last. I love you Bubba. Rest now.”
Thomas also shared additional sentiments in a series of screenshots.
“I never thought I’d have to write a post like this, but here I am,” Aaron began. “Yesterday the love of my life, a man who showed what it was like to be loved unconditionally, passed away after a long fight in the hospital. Eric I will always love you.
“You came into my life when I wasn’t expecting and surprised me. Being with you helped me grow and evolve in ways I didn’t know I was capable of. I know I challenged you, too. Not because we were diminished in some way but because we saw in one another the potential of something more…”
Thomas told AVN when they were together in Palm Springs in early November that “Tyler felt like he was drowning in his own body.”
“The ICU in Palm Springs is a Level 1 trauma center—they saved his life,” Aaron (aka Joshua Kenney) said early Monday morning from his home in New York. “And then more complications arose and his body just gave way.”
Aaron, who met Tyler in June, continued, “I’ve been really trying to remind myself that I was given such a gift with the short amount of time that I had with him.
“My world got ripped away from me on Friday. I’m kind of just figuring out what I’m going to do next. I came back to New York to pack up my things and start our life together so we would no longer be in a long-distance relationship.”
Thomas said he connected with Roberts on a dating app—but he played hard to get at first.
“He’s so sneaky,” Aaron recalls with a laugh. “I was at gay pride at Horse Meat Disco and getting a cab to go home. We had met via Grindr—like one does nowadays—and I was totally blowing him off and he totally guilt-tripped me. He said, ‘I just left this party to come hang out with you.’ So I said, ‘Fine, I’ll come out hang out with you.’”
It was June 25th.
“And there he was standing outside his hotel, this 6-5 guy smiling, smoking a vape,” Aaron, a native of Boston who works as an artist and painter, continued. “He smirked at me with that smirk that he has, that smile.
“To be honest, I actually had no idea who he was. And I think that was part of the reason why I caught him off guard and I intrigued him. I wanted nothing from him but love and the things that I wanted for him were a life fulfilled, whatever that meant for him. That was all I wanted.
“He was going to get his GED and go back to school. We were going to get married and have a kid. Those were the things that we wanted to do… It was one of those weird, wild romances that just was right. I don’t know how many times we were together and people would say, ‘Wow, you can tell how much you guys are in love.’”
Roberts, who was born and raised in Ottawa, Kansas, traveled from Palm Springs back to Miami recently “because he wanted to be home,” Thomas said.
“If you knew Eric, that man was as stubborn as all get out,” Thomas told AVN. “His body couldn’t take it anymore. It had been through a lot. He came into this world being a survivor and having to fight and I think that instinct got him to where he was today. His body just couldn’t do what it needed to do anymore for him. He was so tired. I’m glad he finally gets to have peace and rest.
“I’m a much better person now that I’ve had him in my life.”
Thomas revealed he was going to make his adult film debut with Roberts.
“We had planned that,” said Aaron, a former musical theatre actor who now does abstract paintings for interior design plans.
“I never thought I’d date somebody in the adult film industry. I didn’t think I had that in me. There’s a little bit of jealously that comes with the territory but he just changed me—maybe he hypnotized me.
“I’m still planning to move to Miami and honor the plan we had in place. I’m doing that to honor him. And I’m going to plan the honeymoon we never got to have and travel across Europe and he’ll be with me. I want to make sure that I still do some of the things we wanted to do.”
Adult industry veteran Michael Youens, who had been close friends with Roberts for more than 15 years, told AVN, “Tyler was like a big ole teddy bear.”
“But he knew how to present himself in a role that was Tyler Roberts,” Youens said Sunday night. “Intimately, he was more of a big ole teddy bear… He was my foodie and movie buddy when he would come back to visit San Francisco. We would always go out to eat and go to the movies. He was so happy when AMC came out with their movie pass.”
Youens said he saw Roberts during Folsom in September, having lunch with the new couple at Hillstone, the restaurant where they would always order French Dip subs when Tyler was in town.
“And he talked about how he wanted to win the Best Daddy award and then retire,” Youens recalled.
He said Roberts loved to eat steak and enjoyed the big Hollywood action films.
“He was a kid of the streets of San Francisco who created a gay family here,” Youens said.
Aaron Thomas told AVN that the GoFundMe campaign now would be used to cover Tyler’s final expenses.
