Erika Jayne

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

Early life
Erika Girardi was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 10, 1971, to single mother Renee Chahoy. Her parents broke up before her first birthday. She graduated from North Atlanta High School. At 18, she moved to New York City.

Career
Her first two on-screen appearances were non-speaking roles as Suzanne Morton in the episodes "Prescription for Death" and "The Violence of Summer" as Pruiting's girlfriend in NBC's legal drama series Law & Order. She also had roles in independent films Alchemy (1995) and Lowball (1996).

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 on August 11, 2009.

In 2015, she joined the cast of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills for the show's sixth season.

On September 25, 2019, Jayne announced that she would be playing Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago on Broadway.

Personal life and legal issues
While living in New York, she met Thomas Zizzo, when he 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. After the couple divorced in 1996, she relocated to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming a singer.

In January 2000, she married Thomas Girardi, a founding partner of Girardi & Keese in Downtown Los Angeles after meeting in 1998.

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, 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 missing money owed to people.

On December 17, 2020, the Los Angeles Times published a detailed article about the couple's legal issues titled "The legal titan and the 'Real Housewife': The rise and fall of Tom Girardi and Erika Jayne." Two days later, Jayne released an Instagram post revealing text messages and photos of Tom Girardi's alleged mistress. A documentary about the couple's highly publicized legal troubles titled The Housewife and the Hustler was released on Hulu on June 14, 2021.