Will We See More of Erika Girardi on The Young and the Restless?
#RHOBH's Eileen Davidson wants to make it happen.
As Erika Girardi gets ready for her close-up on The Young and the Restless this season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, she hasn't exactly been her usual, confident Erika Jayne self. Eileen Davidson said she was sure Erika could pull it off, but even the soap star couldn't help but worry just a little. "After I thought about it a little bit, having Erika on the show was a little stressful just because, I had every confidence in her, but nobody else really did, because they didn't know what I felt. At the 11th hour, I was like, 'Ooh, I'm sure she's gonna do well, but what if she doesn't? This is gonna be really bad,'" Eileen told The Daily Dish. "But thank God she nailed it, like one take. One take each time."
It was Erika's passion for soaps that convinced Eileen to give her a chance on Y&R in the first place. "I thought that Erika would be a great fit for The Young and the Restless because she was a soap opera fan. She shared that with me last year when I brought her to set just to visit. And she was very excited just about being there and witnessing the whole process," Eileen explained. "So I thought, 'Oh my God, if I have her on the show, she's gonna really love it.' And I knew she'd fit right in, and she did."
And that's impressive because performing onstage as her alter ego Erika Jayne is quite different from acting in a soap opera. "I think the fact that Erika is a performer certainly helped. But what she does has absolutely no correlation to my show, except for the fact that she's got a great presence and a fantastic personality," Eileen said. "I knew she had acted a little bit before, too. So I had every confidence in her."
Erika even auditioned for her part on the show, which she aced. "They gave her a little bit more than maybe just one line. It could've been just one line. She could've just walked through and picked up a glass and been a waitress and that would have been it," Eileen said. "The fact that she actually could act and was good at delivering stuff, what they needed in a scene, they decided to write her a little bit more."
In the episode, which aired last December, Erika played Farrah Dubose, a successful real estate agent who gets into some major drama with Eileen Davidson's character, Ashley Abbott, after she spills coffee all over her couture suit. "We actually had a lot of fun with it because it had a little bit of that cattiness and then we make up. So it kind of came full circle," Eileen said. "I thought it was a great choice of dialogue, too. [Saying], 'what a bitch' at the end of that was so much fun."
Eileen enjoyed working with Erika so much that she's hoping the RHOBH songstress will reprise her role in a future episode of Y&R. "After I saw it air, I was on the phone, 'Come on you guys, write her something again. It would be so much fun,'" Eileen gushed. "My character on the soap, actually, you never see where she lives. So I'm like, she needs a house. Let's have Erika show her a house. Erika's a real estate agent. They have coffee. We'll see. You never know."
But when it comes to Erika returning the favor with an invitation for Eileen to star in one of Erika Jayne's music videos, the RHOBH actress is a little conflicted on the matter. "This is why Erika having me in one of her music videos is terrifying. I'm the kind of person that would probably have to say yes just because I wouldn't want to not have that experience. But that experience could be absolutely horrible. Let's face it," Eileen said. "I kind of don't want it to happen, but a weird part of me does. I don't know. It's a nightmare."
Well, we think Eileen would absolutely rock it. She seemed to have a blast on the set of Erika's upcoming music video for "XXpen$ive," after all.
