Erika Jayne at the opening of her Las Vegas show Bet It All on Blonde in August 2023.Photo:Denise Truscello/Getty for Live Nation Las Vegas
Denise Truscello/Getty for Live Nation Las Vegas
Erika GirardihadTom Girardiin her corner when she launched her music career back in 2007.
But as she returned to the stage for her hit Las Vegas residency last year, theReal Housewives of Beverly Hillsstar tells PEOPLE felt her estranged husband’s absence.
“On one hand, I felt empowered to be doing it on my own but it was frightening at the same time,” says Erika, who performs under the moniker Erika Jayne. “Tom was someone I turned to for guidance on everything. He was a very big part of my life. I would really go to him and he would sort of talk me into feeling better, or push me to look at things a different way. And when you don’t have that, you miss that.”
“Right or wrong, however anybody feels about it, this was still a relationship that I had for over two decades,” adds Erika, 52. “And that’s not something you can just forget about.”
Fans will see Erika’s journey back to the mic in Bravo’s new two-hour documentary,Erika Jayne: Bet It All on Blonde, which premieres Wednesday.
Erika and Tom wed in 1999 and were married for 21 years until November 2020, whenshe filed for divorce.
Within a month, the now-disgraced and disbarred lawyer was tangled in a complicatedweb of legal controversies, including federal fraud charges in February 2023 related to his alleged embezzlement of $15 million of client funds — like those meant to be awarded tothe victims' families of a 2018 plane crash— for his own personal spending.
His legal issues spilled over to Erika, who was named in a criminal and multiple civil suits for allegedly participating in the mistreatment of said funds. She’s long denied she had any knowledge or involvement, and in August 2022, was cleared in the criminal case. She’s since triumphed in some civil suits, though others remain.
Amid all the troubles, Erika and Tom’s divorce has yet to be finalized. He’s alsobeen living in a “restricted memory care unit"at an assisted living facility since October 2022, following hisdementia and late-onset Alzheimer’s diseasediagnosis in March 2021.
Erika Girardi and Tom Girardi.Steve Eichner/AP
AsErika Jayne: Bet It All on Blondedepicts, all of this weighed heavily on Erika as she prepped her stage return.
“Erika Jayne was always someone I could channel to feel free, but as you’ll see, I had a really hard time finding her,” Erika tells PEOPLE. “Just everything that’s happened, it’s changed me. I feel different now. So grabbing her from inside me again took some time.”
“There were a lot of moments of self-doubt,” she recalls. “I would just be like, ‘Erika, come on, can you please just have fun? Can you please just remember why you love this so much?’ And it wasn’t easy because, you know, grief comes in waves. It can sneak up on you and sometimes steal the joy out of a process like this. Healing is a never-ending journey.”
Asked how she’s feeling today, Erika is realistic. “Today’s a good day, but I can’t say, I don’t know that tomorrow will be great,” she says.
Erika Jayne at BravoCon 2023.Nicole Weingart/Bravo via Getty
Nicole Weingart/Bravo via Getty
Ultimately, Erika says she’s “proud” of what she accomplished.
“It’s not easy,” Erika says of creating the stage show. “To put 80 minutes together in 30 days is unreal. And to only have two days in the theater where most people have two weeks, it was tough. But it was good, you know what I mean? It was amazing, but it was hard!”
She goes on to say she’s “excited” for fans to see the documentary, and has “big plans” for the future of herprovocative Vegas residency, fittingly calledBet It All on Blonde.
“I would love to take Bet it All on Blonde anywhere that they would have me,” Erika notes. “We can take her on the road. It’s a good time. It’s a fun time. And the universe is listening. So if I pulled it out of thin air once, I can pull it out of thin air twice!”
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source: people.com
