Erika Jayne

Erika Girardi (née Chahoy; born July 10, 1971), known professionally as Erika Jayne, is an American singer, television personality and actress.

Early life
Erika Girardi was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 10, 1971, to single mother Renee Chahoy. Her father left when Erika was 9 months old. She graduated from North Atlanta High School. At 18, she moved to New York City.

Acting and reality television
Her first two uncredited on-screen appearances were on the first season of NBC's legal drama series Law & Order as the first murder victim Suzanne Morton in the pilot episode "Prescription for Death" and as Tim Pruiting's girlfriend in "The Violence of Summer". She also had roles in independent films Alchemy (1995) and Lowball (1996).

In 2015, she joined the cast of Bravo's reality television show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills for the show's sixth season. The New York Times estimated that she earned more than $600,000 for the show's 11th season in 2021.

In December 2016, she guest starred on The Young and the Restless with her former Real Housewives cast member Eileen Davidson, who plays Ashley Abbott on the show. She returned as real estate agent Farrah Dubose for one episode in 2017 and two in 2018.

In 2017, she competed on season 24 of Dancing with the Stars. She and her partner, Gleb Savchenko, were eliminated in week five.

She was a red carpet host for the American Music Awards in 2017 and 2018. She co-hosted the pre-show for the 2018 Billboard Music Awards.

In 2018, she competed on Lip Sync Battle. She lost to Taye Diggs.

In 2019, she was cast as Roxie Hart in the Broadway production of Chicago. She debuted on January 6, 2020, at the Ambassador Theater and was due to stay with the show until March 29. Due to COVID-19, production was shut down and her last performance was March 11.

In March 2024, Bravo aired a two-part documentary, Erika Jayne: Bet It All on Blonde, focusing on her 2023 residency at the House of Blues Music Hall in the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. In the documentary, she said she had contemplated suicide during the darkest days of her legal struggles. "I thought about killing myself many times," she said, adding that her son talked her out of it.

Music
According to her autobiography, Pretty Mess, music producer Peter Rafelson came up with the idea of changing her name to "Erika Jayne." Jayne's first single, "Roller Coaster" was released on January 1, 2007. The song placed at number one on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart. Jayne's debut album, Pretty Mess, was released in the United States in August 2009. She released several standalone singles from 2010 to 2018, including number one singles "Painkillr" and "How Many Fucks."

Throughout her music career, Jayne has performed at several gay nightclubs and LGBT pride events, including LA Pride. In 2018, she embarked on her first headlining concert tour, Erika Jayne Presents: The Pretty Mess Tour, visiting 13 cities across the United States. In April 2023, she announced Bet It All on Blonde, a Las Vegas concert residency at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay that ran select weekends from August to December 2023.

Personal life and legal issues
While living in New York, she met Thomas Zizzo, who was working as a DJ at a club in Manhattan. The couple married in December 1991 at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Soon thereafter she gave birth to a son, Thomas Zizzo Jr. He is a police officer in Los Angeles. After the couple divorced in 1996, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming a singer.

In January 2000, she married Los Angeles personal-injury attorney Thomas Girardi, who was 33 years older than her and already twice divorced. They met in 1998 when she was working as a cocktail waitress at Chasen's, a Los Angeles restaurant where he was a regular. He was known for helping win the trial that made Erin Brockovich into a household name.

In November 2020, she announced her separation from Girardi and filed for divorce. One month after the divorce announcement, the couple were named in a lawsuit for allegedly embezzling funds meant for families of the victims of the fatal 2018 Lion Air plane crash. Media outlets reported that the divorce could be a "sham" to hide assets. In December 2020, a Chicago-based law firm asked a federal judge to order Jayne to stop selling designer clothing online amid an effort to recover $2 million in money owed to clients.

On December 17, 2020, a Los Angeles Times article alleged that Tom Girardi "stole millions of dollars from vulnerable clients," and improperly funneled more than $20 million of victims' compensation to EJ Global, a company set up to finance Jayne’s entertainment and singing career. A documentary about the couple's highly publicized legal troubles titled The Housewife and the Hustler was released on Hulu on June 14, 2021. A sequel, The Housewife and the Hustler 2: The Reckoning, featuring Jayne meeting with victims of Girardi's, was released in February 2024. On August 31, 2022, a judge ruled in a $5 million civil fraud lawsuit that the plaintiffs could not prove Jayne had knowledge of or involvement in the alleged fraud.