Garcelle Beauvais has had a very long career. Her story is not well known to many, so she decided to tell it herself with her new book Love Me as I Am. It comes with many revelations about her life and career. Lets review some key things we learned about the actress from her memoirs.
Garcelle Beauvais is a Haitian-American actress who got her start in modeling at 16 when she moved to Miami. By 18, she had been in ads for everyone from Calvin Klein to Mary Kay and had graced the covers of Ebony, Jet, and Playboy. Her acting career soon kicked off, and she enjoyed years of success in film and television. Her most notable roles include Coming to America, NYPD Blue, The Jamie Foxx Show, and Franklin & Bash. These days she enjoys success in the realms of reality television and hosting with stints on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and The Real.
With that much work on her resume, Garcelle obviously has an incredible story to tell. She has decided to do so with the recently published Love Me as I Am. The book is available on Audible and Amazon and tells the full story of her life and trials as she made her way through the Hollywood machine. The official synopsis reads, “Love Me as I Am is an entertaining and unforgettable emotional roller-coaster ride that moves from her early childhood years in Haiti to her adolescence in Boston, from her heady days as a young model in New York—her first taste of real freedom—to Los Angeles and the many ups, downs, and then more ups, both personal and professional, she experienced in her three-decade acting career, including her massive fame as a star of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
For Garcelle, the goal was to give people a really honest lens on the things she has experienced. While she feels she has navigated the majority of her career as an “open book,” Garcelle says that she felt like she was in the best place professionally and personally to tell her story. This is because she’s made peace with her past and forgiven herself and the people in her life. Garcelle reveals that her 50s have been a time period of freedom and that she is “hoping women or men will be able to read this book and connect to it and feel inspired or understand me a little bit better.”
One area of her life she highlights in the book is her failed marriages. Garcelle was married to producer Daniel Saunders early in her career. They share one child together named Oliver, born in 1991. She later married Mike Nilon, a talent agent with Creative Artists Agency, in May 2001. They share twins, Jax Joseph and Jaid Thomas Nilon, born on October 18th, 2007. That marriage ended in divorce as well after it was revealed that Nilon had been having a five-year affair. Their divorce was finalized in May of 2010.
Garcelle was particularly petty following her split with Nilon. After finding out about his infidelity, she sent out a mass email to all his co-workers and colleagues, exposing him. The story hit the news and went viral. In an email titled “Tiger Woods/Jesse James/Mike Nilon,” she exposed him, saying, “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!”
At the time, Garcelle said she had no comment on what she did, opting instead to focus on herself and her kids. However, she did open up about it after joining the cast of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. In a 2020 episode, Beauvais spilled fresh details, saying that she caught her husband because of a text message he had received. She never knew what became of the woman he was cheating with.
Elsewhere, Beauvais opens up about a time Bill Cosby allegedly tried to put something in her drink. She said that she was dealing with a divorce during the initial allegations about Cosby and did not want to add to her own stress, so she did not talk about what happened between them. Beauvais says that her mother taught her a great deal about being cautious as a child after incidents with her stepfather and step brother alerted her to how inappropriate some men could be. “For me, it’s being cautious, but I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt a little more.”
This was the first time Garcelle revealed this encounter with Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby is currently enjoying his freedom after being released early.
