Season 11 of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills may have ended, but that doesn’t mean we’re done talking about Erika Jayne.
The Painkiller singer was under scrutiny all season long as attorneys in the bankruptcy case against her estranged husband Tom Girardi kept a close watch.
Erika’s legal drama also caused concern among her costars, some of whom were hesitant about being affiliated with her. Their concerns grew after the L.A.Times posted a scathing expose about the RHOBH star and made damning accusations against Erika and Tom.
The article was released on the final day of the cast’s trip to La Quinta, but interestingly Erika had abruptly left the day before.
Erika’s castmates questioned whether she made a quick exit because she knew the article was coming out. Still, Erika — who described the story as a “hit piece” — claimed that she doesn’t have insider information about articles before publication.
However, despite saying she did not know about the article’s release, the L.A. Times tells a different story.
Did Erika Jayne know about the L.A. Times article?
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star claimed during a past episode that she didn’t get a heads up about the article, but now we’re hearing another story.
Another L.A. Times article (via All About the Real Housewives) carried an interview with two of their staffers, Matt Hamilton and Harriet Ryan, who wrote the original article – and had plenty to say.
Most interestingly, the duo revealed that they did actually reach out to Erika before the piece was published and gave her the opportunity to comment on the allegations.
“This whole obsession with whether Erika knew our story would be published was frustrating to observe. It became a distraction from the central allegations of the story,” Hamilton said.
“The root of the fixation is whether Erika left La Quinta to escape the scrutiny of the other cast members — which I found somewhat irrelevant. So what if she did? It’s really an ancillary issue, given the enormity of what was going on.”
L.A. Times reached out to Erika Jayne’s team
The L.A. Times staffers continued to refute Erika Jayne’s claim that she didn’t have a heads up about the article, saying they contacted the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star’s representatives to give her an opportunity to speak out.
Hamilton revealed, “We had reached out to Erika’s publicist, and later, attorney, to get [a] comment. We sought comment on the lawsuit that accused the Girardis of a sham divorce. Two days before our story was published in mid-December, we sent questions to her representatives.
“We did not specify when the story would go live online but gave a sharp deadline of the day prior.”
Ryan added, “When she called the story a ‘hit piece,’ I thought either she doesn’t know what that term means, or she didn’t read it.”
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is currently on hiatus on Bravo.