Eileen Davidson Wants to See More of Erika Girardi on 'The Young and the Restless'

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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."

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