With ‘Real Housewives’ Gig, Jennifer Tilly Is Taking On the Toughest Role of Her Career
Jennifer Tilly, the Oscar-nominated actor who has worked in Hollywood alongside visionary and auteur filmmakers including The Wachowskis, Woody Allen and Terry Gilliam, who for decades lent her voice to long-running franchises, all while moonlighting at the top poker tables and taking on the game’s best gamblers to become a world champion player, is now immersed in the most challenging gig in her 30-plus year career: a supporting role on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Tilly’s entree into Bravo’s world of wealthy women who work hard and fight with each other even harder comes in the currently airing 14th season of RHOBH, the franchise’s crown jewel. She appears in episodes as a “friend” of main cast member Sutton Stracke, the socialite boutique owner who rounds out the main group of Hollywood housewives. Their banter and genuine friendship ring true in Tilly’s initial onscreen moments and her addition to the cast gives a fun, loyal sidekick to Stracke, a pal for over 15 years; Tilly was even there to help Stracke with her final audition for the Housewives gig, attending the dinner party she threw to clinch the slot when Stracke joined in season 10 and became a full cast member in season 11.
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“I was so excited about her being on the show because I’ve been obsessed with the Housewives since the very beginning. I was a Housewives superfan,” Tilly tells The Hollywood Reporter of Bravo’s hit Real Housewives franchise, which includes series in New Jersey, Atlanta, New York, Orange County and more. “When Sutton got on, I thought, ‘This is so strange, I’m obsessed with the show and now I’m so close to it.’”
Soon, producers started asking Tilly if she could be persuaded to appear on the long-running series — a career pivot that she says is “not really done” when you’re a working actress of her stature. Tilly’s acting career remains strong, so this move to display a warts-and-all view of her daily life by entering Housewives-land — with its reputation of sharp-tongued fighting, deep and long-standing grudges and all that wine hurled about — is inherently high-risk. But she was just “really tempted.”
It was the actor’s strike-induced cancellation of the SyFy series Chucky — where Tilly reprised her role voicing serial killer and girlfriend of the killer doll, Tiffany Valentine, from the 1998 campy sequel Bride of Chucky — that provided the unfortunate twist of fate in her career that led to her at last saying yes to the Housewives producers. Asked if she’d like to join as a main cast member or as a “friend,” Tilly decided to wade in slowly as a friend of Stracke because she felt it would be less intrusive on her private life. “Boy, was I wrong,” she says. She describes trying to keep her private life private while on the show as akin to trying to dog paddle without getting your hair wet.
“All of these girls have history,” Tilly explains. ”I mean, they barely sit down at the table before they just start yelling at each other. And I’m just ducking and dodging and trying to avoid the shrapnel. I like all the girls, but being a loyal and faithful friend, I don’t know if I’ll ever get close to those girls that are just, mortal, mortal enemies.”
Moving through the looking glass from film and TV sets, where it’s a given that everything is tended to in a specific manner, and into the world of reality TV stardom, which Tilly describes as the wild, wild West, was an exercise that took its own kind of physical and psychological toll. She developed an eye twitch that lasted through her months of filming and, as she explains, after shooting concluded, she would wake up in the middle of the night wondering if she was still being filmed.
“It’s really easy when you go on a talk show to be funny and delightful for seven minutes,” she explains of the Housewives shooting schedule. “When they are filming you for 17-hour days, the real you starts to creep through.”
The real Jennifer Tilly, the working actor, has built and sustained her own cult following over the past three decades. She’s parlayed her unmistakable breathy voice into long-running roles on Family Guy and the Chucky franchise, while also appearing on Broadway. She now only takes the screen roles she wants, and she has sides to her life you might not see coming, given that bright smile and bubbly demeanor.
A shark at the poker table who in 2005 bested 600 entrants to win the Ladies’ No-Limit Hold ’em event at the World Series of Poker, TIlly is now back at the tables after years off from the game. “I like to play with the best in the world. I like the challenge. It ups my game,” she says. Poker is a great game for actors, she says, and the similarities between the green felt tables and the glass and marble ones where she’s been sitting on camera are not lost on Tilly.
“Everybody’s playing a game. It’s like, who’s playing it the best?” she says. “That’s that one who’s going to come out on top. But the thing is, the stakes [on Housewives] are that you’re playing your real relationships.”
One of Tilly’s most important past relationships, one that viewers would never guess — unless, like Erika Jayne, they have a razor sharp eye for high-end jewelry — was revealed only a few episodes into RHOBH’s current season. Tilly’s backstory, and her sizable personal wealth — which vastly surpasses what a beloved working actress could accumulate — were drawn onto the table in a conversation among her new group of frenemies. On the Dec. 3 episode, Tilly revealed to those who didn’t know that she was married for several years to Sam Simon, the late television producer who co-developed The Simpsons. Simon died of colorectal cancer after battling the disease for three years. Now, she collects about one-third of Simon’s ongoing earnings from the animated series which is now in its 36th season.
“Every day, honestly, every day I’m like, ‘Thank you, Sam!'” she said on the show.
TIlly and Simon, who met on the set of his short-lived ABC series Shaping Up, married in 1984 and remained close friends after they divorced in 1991. The love for him is palpable when she speaks of their relationship, their mutual passion for poker, when he met her current longtime partner, professional poker player Phil Laak, and the big role she played in Simon’s life until his death.
“I kind of took two years off of my career to take him to treatments and everything. It was a really big loss for me when Sam passed away,” she now says while describing his final resting place, where a tombstone features a rendering of Bart Simpson and his dog, Santa’s Little Helper. “I had power of attorney. And so I got to pick where he was, so I knew the Westwood Cemetery. I put him in the VIP section because he always liked to be important.”
Tilly’s multitudes are certainly set to be revealed as RHOBH continues to unfold, and perhaps beyond, as she already feels like a breakout Housewives player. And if what we know of the long-standing franchise holds, it may get darker, Tilly says — and she just might go there, too. In fact, a recent aside moment onscreen between her and fellow “friend of the Housewives” Kathy Hilton may be an indicator as to how much of Tilly the show’s producers will reveal. Hilton, turning to Tilly, deadpanned: “You seem very jolly. But everybody has a dark side. We shall see.”
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills airs new episodes Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on Bravo, streaming the next day on Peacock.
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