Garcelle Beauvais: 5 Things To Know About New ‘Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ Star

Another actress is joining the cast of ‘RHOBH’ and she’s making history in the process. Garcelle Beauvais will be the first African-American housewife on Beverly Hills’ franchise and we’ve got five things to know about her.

Garcelle Beauvais is the latest actress to join the cast of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. The 52-year-old’s resume goes all the way back to Miami Vice in 1985 to currently starring in Freeform’s Siren. Garcelle is no stranger to the big and small screen, and will make history as RHOBH‘s first African-American cast member as the show goes into its tenth season on Bravo. “As the first African-American Housewife in the Beverly Hills franchise, I am honored and humbled by this awesome opportunity to exemplify the fact that Black Girl Magic lives and thrives in every zip code!” Garcelle said in a statement to The Daily Dish.  We’ve got five things to know about Garcelle,

1. Garcelle will be the third working actress among the season 10 cast. 

She joins Lisa Rinna, 56, and Denise Richards, 48, as Housewives who have active acting careers.

2. This will be Garcelle’s first foray into a full-time reality TV show. 

“As a working actor who has been in the industry for some time, it’s exhilarating to have the opportunity to delve into a new chapter in the entertainment spectrum,” Garcelle told The Daily Dish. She’s done numerous co-hosting jobs, including guest stints on Access Hollywood Live, The Talk and The View.

3. Garcelle has had a long and successful acting career. 

She got her big break playing Cynthia Nichols on Aaron Spelling‘s short lived night-time soap Models Inc in 1995, then gained fame as Francesca ‘Fancy’ Monroe on The Jamie Foxx show from 1996-2001. Following her stint on that comedy, she showed off her drama chops on ABC’s critically acclaimed NYPD Blue as A.D.A. Valerie Heywood from 2001-2004.

4. Garcelle has been married twice and has three kids. 

Her first marriage to producer Daniel Saunders resulted in a son Oliver, who was born in 1991. She then married CAA agent Mike Nilon in 2001 and the couple went on to have twin sons Jax Joseph and Jaid Thomas in Oct. of 2007 after a long struggle with infertility.

5. Garcelle and Mike had a very messy and public split. 

In 2010 she discovered her husband was allegedly having a long-term affair with another woman and she fired off an angry e-mail to a number of his CAA colleagues. “Tiger Woods/Jesse James/Mike Nilon,” the actress wrote: “What do they have in common…I found out today that MY husband of almost 9 yrs has been having an affair for 5 yrs with some slut in Chicago. I am devastated!!!! And I have been duped!! Our boys don’t deserve this!” The e-mail was leaked to the New York Post, which printed it. She revealed on Oprah Winfrey‘s Where Are They Now in April of 2015 that she went to therapy and got a life coach to help her deal the with pain and embarrassment over the split so that she could move on to being able to co-parent with Mike. They divorced in 2010 following the cheating scandal.