The Many Lives of Jennifer Tilly—From Oscar Nominee, to Real Housewife

Few Hollywood legends have lived as many lives as Jennifer Tilly. Not only did she earn an Oscar nomination for her performance in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway in 1995, but the actor has since enjoyed fruitful voice acting career (you can hear her signature breathy pipes on Family Guy), gained a cult following for her role as Tiffany in the Chucky franchise (“Barbie, eat your heart out”), and kickstarted a lucrative career as a professional poker player.

Now, Tilly is gaining a whole new legion of fans, thanks to joining season 14 of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills as an official friend-of. “The Housewives is really crazy—it’s not really a career move that a lot of people would recommend,” laughs Tilly over Zoom this week. “But at this point in my life, I just want to do things that are fun.”

Fun is certainly the world to describe Tilly’s Real Housewives takeover this season. Not dissimilar to how Kathy Hilton entered the series, Tilly has brought some highly entertaining scene-stealing irreverence to the mix. Four episodes in, and viewers are already obsessed with her glamorous fashions ($33,000 Louis Vuitton bags!), unexpected lore (she owns a stake in The Simpsons!), and eccentric personality. For Tilly, transitioning into this world of reality TV has been a fun, if not unexpected, challenge. “It’s not like anything you would ever imagine,” says Tilly. “First of all, these ladies sit down at dinner, and they start screaming at each other before you’ve even eaten your amuse bouche. But in a weird way, I enjoy it. I feel like I have a front row seat at the Super Bowl.”

Vogue caught up with Tilly to chat about diving into the Real Housewives world, how she dresses for reality TV (fans of Tom Ford-era Gucci should tune in), and her decades-long career.

Vogue: Fans are loving you on this season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I was curious: What first excited you about joining this universe?

Jennifer Tilly: For the last three summers, I’ve been filming the TV series Chucky, and when it was inexplicably cancelled, I was looking at a really long, empty summer. It’s always been a fantasy of mine to be on the show; I had an idea of how fun and glamorous it would be. My best friend, Sutton, has been on the show for about four years, and I did a couple of scenes last season. They’d been asking me to be on the show for about three years. I thought, well, how many people at my age have the opportunity to be on Real Housewives? So, I agreed.