What Erika Jayne Was Like Before Joining Real Housewives

Posted by Almeda Bohannan on Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Fans of the show know Erika Jayne as a straight shooter who lets loose on stage but stays guarded otherwise. She has been selectively open about her personal history, sharing that she was a young mother and met Tom Girardi while cocktail waitressing, but it's still hard to get a good sense of what she was like before she was famous.

Her memoir, "Pretty Mess," tells us a bit more about Erika's pre-Bravo life, and shows readers a warmer, bolder, and scrappier side to the normally polished and reserved Housewife. In the book, she describes her son as the most important man in her life, which clearly seems true. She also describes restless energy that inspired her to create the Erika Jayne persona, fearing her life as just a small "h" housewife would leave her "relegated to a life of shopping, sitting on a few charity boards of no consequence, and standing silently by my husband's side full of unrealized potential" (via the Los Angeles Times).

Erika wasn't the only one who recognized her calling as a performer. In fact, it was her friend, former Housewife Yolanda Hadid, who got her on the show. "I remember sitting [on] my living room couch with Erika and her husband and David and they were talking about a music career, and all of a sudden, I'm like, no, she has to be a Housewife," Yolanda told The Daily Dish. Turns out she was right.

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