Erika Lauren Wasilewski of The Real World Washington D.C.
I was doing a little background research on the cast members of MTV’s The Real World Washington, D.C. diligently looking for some skeletons in the closet so I could flex my Pulitzer-worthy journalism muscles when I stumbled onto a thread about Erika Lauren Wasilewski on vevmo.com that made my mind implode! The discussion there started after the web site shabooty.com published an email allegedly from Erika’s former boyfriend Billy who claimed she started telling her friends she had skin cancer shortly after he broke up with her back in 2006.
Here is the original email sent to shabooty:
A friend of mine linked me your write-up of Erika Wasilewski of next seasons Real World. In the comments somebody mentioned that she faked cancer when her boyfriend broke up with her. Just wanted to confirm that it is true. I was the boyfriend that broke up with her. She actually faked some sort of skin cancer for close to 9 months. Everybody in our hometown believed her except for me and a select few people. Everybody hated me because I was “the guy who made fun of the girl with cancer”. Her family actually covered for her lies and went along with it. So f*cked up. Once the truth came out and she finally admitted it she basically lost all her friends and went MIA for a while.
Billy
And here is Billy’s post on the vevmo thread, which adds quite a bit more:
Hi. My name is Billy and I am the ex-boyfriend. As reported on Shabooty I can confirm that this is true. I dated Erika a few years back for only a couple months. Very quickly did I realize that something was not right with her. I would venture to say that she was a compulsive liar. Never have I met somebody so dramatic or attention-starved. Soon the craziness was just too much to handle so I broke up with her. Immediately after breaking up with her she said something along the lines of ‘you can’t break up with me . . . I . . . I . . . have cancer.’ I guess she figured that I would stay with her out of pity. Knowing she was full of **** I instantly called her bluff and she played it off as being extremely offended that I would say something like that to a cancer patient. For the first few months only a select couple people did not believe her. Everybody else figured lying about cancer was so far-fetched that they just went along with it. It wasn’t just a one-time lie. She constantly used her cancer as a tool to manipulate scores of people. For some ****ed up reason her whole family was in on the lie and covered for her. For months I was hated in my hometown because I was ‘the guy who made fun of the girl with cancer’. Slowly people started to connect the dots and realize that a girl who claimed to be in chemotherapy still had a full head of hair. About 9 months after she initially told me she had cancer, she finally admitted that it was all a lie. It wasn’t until after we broke up that I found out she had also faked diabetes, west nile, and having a cancerous growth removed (it was a non-cancerous mole or something). While she was faking cancer she started dating another guy (whom later realized she was insane and became a friend of mine). She manufactured another story about her full-blooded italian grandfather dying (she’s 100% polish) and used it for pity with this new guy. I’m not sure of all the details on that, but you can read about it in the Shabooty comments section. Another story about that family that comes to mind is a few months into our relationship her sister cheated on her boyfriend and created a **** story to cover up for her infidelity, so it seems that bat**** crazy is in their genes. I don’t know how I am suppose to ‘prove’ that any of this is true, you can ask anybody from our hometown, everybody knows the story. If anybody has any other questions I will be glad to answer them.
Billy
UPDATE – Whether or not all of what Billy is saying is true, Erika Wasilew did confirm to TimeOut Chicago that she faked cancer to get attention from a high school boyfriend. TimeOut Chigao flat-out asked her about faking cancer and she replied:
“Yes, it happened. Yes, I regret it. If I could take it back, I would. I was going through some severe emotional problems at the time. I was lashing out and craving attention wherever I could. It was really destructive. I didn’t even realize I had a problem until my freshman year of college. At that point, I received help and I did take antidepressants. I weaned myself off with the guidance of my doctor, and I’ve basically done a complete turnaround.”
It all seemed a little suspicious to me, but as I continued to read the thread more and more former friends of Erika’s began posting to not only confirm the cancer story, but to give additional testimony to the fact that Erika Wasilewski is absolutely bonkers! She apparently lied about being raped, her grandfather dying and (my favorite) rescuing a woman’s baby from a wrecked car. Here’s a little ditty from Erika’s time at Columbia College Chicago thanks to LOL from Illinois:
Excuse me, can we also discuss how Erika tried dorming at Columbia College Chicago? This crazy b*tch made a FOUR PAGE LIST of rules for her roommates to abide by…even though she moved in halfway through the semester and the other girls lived there since the beginning of school. Because they didn’t like her, much like everyone else who ever meets Erika, Erika faked this whole fiasco about her MUSLIM ROOMMATES stealing her bacon. Muslims do not eat pork. She called the cops and created quite a scene in the lobby of the University Center dorm building, and also filed “restraining orders” against these girls who had no desire to go anywhere within 20 ft of her. SHE IS A LUNATIC.
Man o man! Lying about cancer AND bacon?!? This could be waaaay bigger than the Snooki punch on Jersey Shore!
Here are some screen captures from her ex-boyfriend’s facebook page (submitted by him to vevmo) relishing the fact that Erika is reaping what she has sewn:
Amazing! Okay, so we have all this dirt from Erika’s past. The next part of the story first broke in these tweets from ollignom on September 8:
Tue, 08 Sep 2009 03:07:52 +0000
ollignom : #RWDC #Exlusive!!! ERIKA has left!!!Tue, 08 Sep 2009 03:06:57 +0000
ollignom : Just confirmed. ERIKA has left #RWDC we are down to 7. She just got in a cab with IAN with her stuff
Vevmo’s wiggyndc was scheduled to do a photoshoot for an article about RWDC for a local magazine when the drama went down and he does a fabulous job summing up what he was able to observe about her departure. (Read the full description HERE.) Here are a couple excerpts:
At one point, about ten minutes or so into the shoot, the front door opened and a sound guy with his boom mic and a camera guy came out. A few moments later, Ian and Erika emerged from the front door with luggage. (Mind you at this point it became a scene because people on the other side of the street were already taking pictures of us doing the photoshoot, and now with the camera crew on the sidewalk with us, the tourists got their money’s worth). Anyhow, they got in a cab that had been hailed for them. The camera crew taped this of course and then the cab left.
I won’t go as far as to confirm this, but I spoke to my insiders who told me this:
Ian came to visit last week. Erika, who by all accounts thrives off drama, has been giving shenanigans inside the house for a while now and, according to my sources, this weekend she had a meltdown and “had enough.”
Contributors to the forum later receive additional confirmation from sources on the production staff that Erika had indeed left the show and that they were going to replace her! There is much speculation that though the cast members aren’t allowed access to some things, including vevmo.com, that they still somehow caught word of Erika’s past and confronted her about it, and judging from Erika’s past it sounds as though owning up to things isn’t one of her strong suits. That’s purely speculation on my part, though! I’m sure we will know soon enough in what is sure to be one of the dramatic highlights from the 23rd season of The Real World!
Here are some photos of Erika and her boy bud Ian Ver:
I plan on doing a post with a bunch of background info on Erika and the laundry list of bands she has been a part of including lots of links and photos, so stay tuned! (You can already check out photos of Erika’s castmate Ashley Lindley HERE.)
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