Five years ago, Erika Jayne—the self-branded “Pretty Mess” of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills—was cheated out of three weeks of her Broadway debut. She’s here to get her time back.
Through February 23 (including a recently announced two-week extension), Jayne will be Chicago’s starry-eyed murderess Roxie Hart, a role she stepped into in January 2020 with plans to headline the Ambassador Theatre through March 29. Her last performance was, unceremoniously, March 11.
“I remember us being called into the theater for a meeting and them saying, ‘We don't know the status of the next week,’” Jayne tells Tamsen Fadal on The Broadway Show. “On television the next day, the governor shut everything down. It was like, ‘Well, I guess we're going home.’” The following day, she picked up her things from the theater, packed up her New York apartment and went home to Los Angeles.
COVID, somehow, turned out to be the easiest part of the reality star’s past five years.
Fadal asks how her second go in Chicago differs from her first and she can’t help but laugh. “Well, obviously my personal life is completely blown up,” Jayne says. She offers no further explanation, but that’s because the tabloids have already done such a thorough job of it. In November 2020 Jayne filed for divorce from Tom Girardi, the famed attorney who, at the time, was mired in lawsuits accusing him of stealing millions from vulnerable clients. He’s since been found guilty on four federal counts of wire fraud and, now in advanced stages of dementia, awaits sentencing. Jayne, in turn, was left with the slow project of rebuilding her life, career and reputation, all while battling Bravo micro-scandals about her nefarious use of non-waterproof mascara.
“I'm not the same person I was five years ago. I don't think any of us are,” she says. “So coming into Chicago with a fresh set of eyes, Roxie almost feels in some ways even closer to home. There's a lot more dirt under my nails this time. Just life, and age, and experience. And I think that that will affect the performance.”
Her run spans just five weeks (originally planned to be only three), but it’s enough time to get the closure she wasn’t afforded the first time around when she was in the thick of a dream come true. Real Housewives viewers watched her tearfully sign her Broadway contract, projecting how Chicago would fulfill her long-held fantasy of life on the stage. Now, she returns a clear-eyed veteran—one whose firsthand experience of the pandemic shutdown permanently bonds her to the scrappy heart of the Broadway community.
“I get to see the whole cast in a couple days and I am excited to give some people a hug,” she says to Fadal in the days leading up to her Roxie reprise. “It's corny, but it's true. You do have a little family here when you perform and you get to know people. I think that's important and I think that makes the shows that much more sweet.”