Bravo’s “Erika Jayne: Bet It All on Blonde,” a two-hour documentary special, will premiere on March 6, the network announced Wednesday. According to the logline for the special, the spinoff of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” will employ “a compilation of formal interviews and observational footage” to capture cast member Jayne during her preparation for her Las Vegas residency, which viewers saw her score on the show’s currently airing 13th season. The special covers the “frenzied six-week run-up to opening night” at the House of Blues on August 25, 2023, as Jayne works on assembling her songs, wardrobe and choreography while contending with the “realities of budget constraints and a ticking clock.”
“Bet It All on Blonde” was originally announced at BravoCon in early November, and the Vegas residency represents a comeback for Jayne, as the backdrop for the special revolves around her legal and financial problems after the downfall of her estranged husband, the disgraced former attorney Tom Girardi, who is now 84. In December 2020, several lawsuits revealed that Girardi —once seen as a crusading lawyer who’d always stuck up for the little guy — had allegedly stolen millions of dollars from his clients. From there, Girardi’s problems have only gotten worse. He was disbarred in 2022, and this upcoming May, he will go on trial for federal wire charges related to his alleged theft of settlement money. Jayne, which is Erika Girardi‘s stage name, separated from him in the fall of 2020, but the taint from his alleged crimes proved hard for her to shed.
For the past few seasons of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” Jayne’s problems have been a focus of the show, which she has handled with varying degrees of frustration and anger. In Season 13, though, viewers have noted (and enjoyed) Jayne’s new approach to the matter, including in the premiere when she asked her therapist how a person goes about developing empathy, and subsequently announced that she’d given up fighting with the women for Lent. In a delightful recent episode, Jayne got happily hammered during a cast dinner in Barcelona, and revealed her surprising knowledge about the Fertile Crescent, and the Sunnis and Shiites. She also spouted the instant-classic line “Merce is in the purse,” referring to her castmate Sutton Stracke’s decision to bring the ashes of her mentor, the famed choreographer Merce Cunningham, to Spain in order to dispense with them. (Some of Jayne’s old resentments were also on display, however, when she didn’t think her castmates were happy enough for her when a legal judgment over contested $750,000 earrings Girardi had given her —which had been discussed in detail on the show — went her way.)
Jayne will also be seen in Hulu’s “The Housewife and the Hustler 2: The Reckoning,” an ABC News StudiosandL.A. Times Studios documentary, which will premiere on Feb. 12. In the followup to the the June 2021 ABC News investigation, “The Housewife and the Hustler,” she will sit down on camera with some of Girardi’s alleged victims.
Similarly, in the trailer for “Bet It All on Blonde,” Jayne says, “Tom’s behavior was bad for three years —the shit this man did, the fallout is great.” She then asks a producer how Girardi’s competency hearing went —ultimately, he’s been deemed competent to stand trial —and says, “I would be a liar if I said it was 100% out of my mind.” As Jayne continues to rehearse for her show, friction increases between her and her longtime creative director, Mikey Minden. “No one was killing it, including you,” he says to her pointedly.
“Bet It All on Blonde” is produced by 32 Flavors Entertainment and Goodbye Pictures. Erika Girardi, Alex Baskin, Jeff Festa, Rich Bye, Mark Ritchie and Billy Taylor will executive produce.
Here’s the trailer for “Bet It All on Blonde.”
