Wednesday’s episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills included a scene between Dorit and her husband PK Kemsley discussing Erika’s problems and her social media behavior. PK has several critiques for Erika which come from his experience undergoing a 1 billion dollar bankruptcy with a business and managing celebrities for a living. He gave his analysis of what he would have advised Erika to do if he had been hired to handle her crisis management.
Dorit and PK are having a romantic champagne and caviar date night to celebrate the launch of Dorit’s new line of bridal gowns: Dorit x Nektaria. Soon enough, however, the conversation shifts to Erika, and PK has quite a lot to say.
He starts off by saying that Erika can say a lot that doesn’t have anything to do with her legal issues, like “she’s very sorry for the victims,” and “it’s devastating.” Dorit says that Erika HAS said that.
This is followed by a clip of Erika from a past episode responding to Garcelle’s statement that “the victims are the important thing.” After a brief pause Erika says “yeah, the victims need to be taken care of.” Erika hasn’t said much more about the victims than that, and has spent the majority of her time on the show talking about badly Tom has treated her and how he had a major personality and cognitive shift after his 2017 car crash.
PK then comments that he doesn’t think Erika’s social media posts are helping her situation. At the time this was filmed (January 2021) Erika had recently posted texts proving that Tom had cheated on her at some time in the past, and she had just posted a lingerie ad that wasn’t coming off well giving the circumstances.
Kyle and Dorit had discussed Erika’s social media a days ago. Kyle pointed out that the lingerie pics make sense because she was the ambassador of a lingerie brand, but she said that some of the captions she uses are encouraging more hate, like one where she insults her commentors: “I thought about disabling comments, but you all are so gullible I just can’t.” Erika was a brand ambassador for Savage x Fenty until July, 2021.
Erika Jayne definitely didn’t lighten her controversial social media posts in the coming months. In May, 2021, she posted an illustration of herself on a crucifix with earrings that read “orphans” and “widows.” She captioned the post “Scapegoat.”
PK found Erika’s social media posts “inappropriate” because of what was going on with her, and he had no idea she would eventually post the “scapegoat” post above. He feels like she’s sending the message that she doesn’t care.
Dorit then says that what Erika is facing is allegations, but PK is quick to give his opinion that what Tom did, which is misappropriating millions of dollars in settlement money for his clients, who were victims of terrible things like horrific fires and losing loved ones in a plane crash, is not alleged. While Tom’s case hasn’t gone to trial, he now says he’s out of money and his clients are still owed millions from lawsuits that he won for them. The corporations Tom’s law firm won judgement and settlement money from have paid up. The only questions now is where the money went once Tom and his law firm got a hold of it.
“What’s alleged is that he’s lost his mind,” PK says. “And he don’t know what day it is, and can’t remember 10 minutes ago. That’s alleged. And that’s highly unlikely, I mean that guy’s been active borrowing money and doing what he’s been doing for the last few years.”
Dorit is still defensive of Erika. She thinks it’s possible that Tom, who was cheating on Erika, had been lying to her for over 20 years. Dorit thinks that it’s possible for Erika to come out of all of this with a whole new life.
“Not if she’s not careful about how she conducts herself now,” PK says. “You need to send out the right message, and that isn’t with your legs open in stockings. That’s just not the right message. When you portray that you don’t care, and you’re uninterested, and you’re just living your best life, Erika’s scratching the nose of the creditors.”
“She’s scratching it,” PK says. “She saying ‘I don’t give a f**k . . . They’ll come for her. I’ve never seen a worse response to what’s going on.”
Dorit explains that Erika’s response to this advice might be that she needs to promote her lingerie brand to earn money, ignoring the fact that it’s not just the lingerie that’s sending the message, but more so her provocative and sassy captions.
PK counters with the fact that Erika should keep a longterm strategy in mind, that it’s not just about getting money in the present moment, but worrying about her ability to earn money in the future.
“If I was brought in as crisis management,” PK says. “I would say to her ‘It’s a rechange of brand.’ The greatest artists in the world do that. Nobody stays in a certain space. And when circumstances change, you really have to change.”
PK feels so impassioned with what he’s saying that he stands up to continue speaking. “I’ve been through a bankruptcy . . .a billion dollar bankruptcy” he goes on. “If I had behaved a certain way they would have pushed it and pushed it and pushed it . . You can’t just stick you fingers up.” PK clarifies that his situation was a corporate one, not one where there was money diverted from victims to whom $50k or $100k would be a life-changing amount of money.
