Sutton Stracke, Garcelle Beauvais & Crystal Kung Minkoff Detail How Erika Jayne & Tom Girardi Drama Impacted 'RHOBH'
While Sutton Stracke, Garcelle Beauvais and Crystal Kung Minkoff may still be relatively new to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, they've made quite an impact on the show.
In season 10, Beauvais joined the cast and Stracke entered the show as a friend. Then the cast welcomed Kung Minkoff in season 11 with Stracke joining as a main cast member. The ladies sat down with the Los Angeles Times to discuss their experiences so far and how Erika Jayne and Tom Girardi's legal woes took center stage during season 11.
Stracke told the L.A. Times that she felt sorry for Jayne after she and the 82-year-old called it quits.
"Because divorce is hard and they have been married for so long. I was married for 17 years. And they were married for 20 years. And it’s sad. Divorce is sad. And I don’t think any of us exactly knew why. You just instantly start going through your mind: I wonder what happened here for her to do that?" the 50-year-old said.
"I go into like a self-absorbed place because I’m like: OK, I’m brand new. The other girl with a big age gap [in her marriage] is getting divorced. Why am I here? I don’t want that. I’m not here to get divorced," Kung Minkoff said of the split. "I’m here to be to show my family in a positive light. You hear the stories of, it’s 'the curse,' right? I was like, Oh my God, this is just designed to be this tornado of negativity. I didn’t know if we should continue because that really scared me."
In December, the L.A. Times published an article called "The legal titan and the 'Real Housewife': The rise and fall of Tom Girardi and Erika Jayne" about the singer and the attorney's relationship and their financial woes. The article made waves on the reality show.
Kung Minkoff said she read the article and thought "'this season is going to be about: this woman’s husband goes to prison.' Production told us about it [the article]. We didn’t know about it because we were still at the hotel, and they were at the house. So production’s like, 'I need you guys to open your text.'"
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"I went and got it in paper. I read it three times on my phone, and then went and got the paper version. Because I needed to see it in paper," Stracke said.
Beauvais told the publication that in the aftermath of the article they didn't think about stopping production. "We can’t. That’s out of our hands," the actress said.
"When I left Kyle’s [Richards] house in La Quinta, my first call was to production. When I read the article the fourth time, I got concerned because we were hearing stories from one side, and I was like, 'Are we gonna keep hearing stories? On camera? Do we need an attorney to kind of help us guide us through filming?' That was really my biggest question. And they said: 'This is such a great question. Why don’t you get the girls together?'" Stracke said.
"And then you called me and I was like, 'Oh, my God, I never thought about that. We could be implicated,'" Beauvais said.
"I guess because I had seen other reality shows and there’s people who do all these crazy things, I was like: It doesn’t affect the other people," Kung Minkoff admitted.
Stracke said she is a private person and the situation freaked her out.
