Erika Jayne leaned on her son for support during a challenging time in her life. ET’s Brice Sander spoke to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star ahead of the release of her documentary, Erica Jayne: Bet It All on Blonde, and she opened up about revealing her suicidal thoughts to her adult son, who’s a police officer.
“My son is someone that sees really hard things every day,” she told ET of her son, whom she’s “very close” with.
“I never wanted to confide in my child too much, ’cause I don’t wanna feel like I’m leaning on them, but how can you avoid what’s going [on]?” Erika said. “I really appreciated his words at that time, which was, ‘You have to stick this out. If you give up everyone else wins.'”
The down period came amid Erika’s divorce from Tom Girardi and the legal issues that followed. In the documentary, Erika explained, “There was nothing hopeful on the horizon for years. That’s when you’re like, ‘Well, why am I here?'”
“I thought about killing myself many a times,” she said. “I talked to my son, like, ‘I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be here.’ He’s like, ‘That’s great, but here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to dig your heels in and you’re going to fight like a mother f**ker and you’re going to show everyone that they were wrong and you were right and then we can have this conversation after that. But until then you’re going to fight.”
And fight she did, which was necessitated by how she lost herself in her marriage.
“I think every marriage or relationship you’re trading, you’re compromising in some way. I think that I molded myself into his life and gave up a little bit of my… essence,” Erika told 360aproko. “I was living his life and his accomplishments and what he had done, and had not really had a life of my own to point to to say, ‘Oh, I have shows here,’ or ‘I did Broadway.’ Those things had not come yet, so I was living his life… I was on the sidelines.”
Despite Erika’s tumultuous divorce, which remains ongoing because she still has “more legal stuff to walk through,” she said she doesn’t hate or resent men.
“It is what it is. We’re talking about human beings. They are complex,” she said. “People disappoint us all the time, even the ones that we admire the most. If anything, I think what hurt the most was someone I admired let me down.”
She got through those feelings with “a lot of therapy” and by being “very active in my mental health.”
“Only one person could solve this, and that was me,” she said. “Your friends, thank God for them, but they have their own lives. This isn’t their problem, it’s your problem. I’m very grateful for everyone around me, all my doctors, and I’m fortunate to have the access to those people to help me.”
Many of the ups and downs are shown in Erika Jayne: Bet It All on Blonde, which Erika told 360aproko is “pretty raw.”
“This was a crucial time in my life, the biggest opportunity of my performing career, and it is a portrayal of what was really going on,” she said. “… Maybe people will walk away with a different understanding of who I am and not a persona so much. Erika Jayne is a person. She is an over the top character, larger than life, fantasy, love, escape, glitz, glamour and fun. There ain’t a whole lot of that in Bet It All on Blonde. On the stage there is, but in real life, no.”
No matter how viewers respond to the documentary, Erika is secure in herself.
“The one thing I am certain about is that I am tough and I will not be broken. Even though I get knocked down, I am not going to stay down,” she said. “… Anything is possible, truly. You have to fight for it, but you can make things happen for yourself. Life is not over after divorce. Life is not over in middle age. You’re going to rise again. You will be able to recreate. You will be able to rebuild. You will come out. You will have scars, but you’re going to be OK.”
Erika Jayne: Bet It All on Blonde premieres March 6 on Bravo after part 2 of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season 13 reunion.
