Kelly Hyman on Acting, Law and Her Podcast: ‘It Was a Blessing and a Curse’ (EXCLUSIVE)
The third season of the 'Y&R' actress-turned-lawyer's podcast explores two recent tragic murders
Few people can say they’ve rubbed elbows with the likes of Brad Pitt in the first half of their career while spending the second half fighting for justice as an accomplished attorney, but Kelly Hyman has proven since her youth that she’s one-of-a-kind. From a role on The Young and the Restless to the commercials and modeling gigs that defined her youth, Hyman has seemingly always been at work, striving to be the best she could possibly be at whatever it was she was putting her mind to. For the 55-year-old screen star-turned-lawyer, however, her time in front of a camera was more than just a hobby—it was crucial to her family’s financial well-being.
“It was a blessing and a curse,” she told Woman’s World. “I’m very blessed to have the opportunity to do the work that I did, but a curse, from a standpoint, that there was a lot of pressure as a child to make money in order for [my] family to survive. I remember as a child one time, laying on the grass looking up into the stars and saying to God, ‘Please, God, get me another commercial,’ because I knew the impact it had.”
This pressure, she explains, was beneficial in some ways: She knew that veering down the wrong path could threaten her ability to work and therefore survive—a notion that she says likely contributed to the work ethic she now has. With a new season of her podcast, Once Upon a Crime in Hollywood, premiering January 3, get to know Kelly Hyman.
Kelly Hyman’s acting career
Despite the pressures of her early days in front of a camera, Hyman’s time as a child actress is something she looks back on fondly, explaining that her favorite part of it all was being able to play pretend.
“It was great as a child to pretend that you were these different roles and use your own imagination,” she shared. “I had an acting coach who’s passed on, Harry Mastrogeorge, and he has taught some amazing actors, and he always instilled in me that imagination, as Einstein said, was more important than knowledge.”
Furthermore, the relationships she cultivated while in the industry are meaningful to her to this day. “One of my best childhood friends was Shalane McCall who was on Dallas, and spending time with her was one of the things that I truly enjoyed because we were both young in the business and growing up together. And she was a great sounding board to talk things about the business and experience things, and she was my childhood rock in the entertainment industry.”
Making her transition into law
For Hyman, law was something she knew she always wanted to do, and at thirty years old, despite already having a well-established career in Hollywood, she stepped away to go to law school. While nowadays you’re more likely to see her face on your TV discussing major legal cases in the media across networks like Fox News, Court TV, CNN, MSNBC and more, Hyman says she still applies her acting skills to her current career in many ways.
“In the scheme of things—depositions, for example, are like improvisation, where if you improv and pretend, you don’t know what someone’s going to say,” she says, emphasizing the importance of being quick on your feet.
Her work in front of the camera as an actress has proven beneficial in the other aspects of her career that require a certain sensitivity. “Acting, you’re pretending you’re being someone, and it enables you to step in the shoes of someone else and see someone’s perspective,” she explains.
Hyman dishes on the new season of her podcast
In the third installment of Once Upon a Crime in Hollywood, Hyman dives into the tragic murders of 24-year-old Christy Giles and 26-year-old Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, two young women who were dropped off at separate hospitals about two miles away from one another by masked men. Though hospital staff did all they could to revitalize Christy, she died of an overdose. Hilda was left in a coma after being resuscitated, but died only two weeks later. In the systems of these innocent young women was a fatal mix of cocaine, ketamine and fentanyl, Hyman explained. David Pearce is the Hollywood producer who has been charged with not only their tragic murders but additional sexual assaults of other women, going to trial in January of 2025.
With Hyman’s podcast diving into this case so near to the trial, she hopes it brings about positive change and sheds light on the horrific deaths of these young women. This season, Hyman spoke to those closest with the victims, and going into these discussions is something she does with sensitivity and grace. “I rely back on my acting from my childhood to see things from a person’s perspective, to really understand that it’s not easy to talk about this matter, and if at any point in time they no longer want to talk about it or do something, that’s totally fine,” she explained.
“I represent people that have been sexually abused, and it’s something that’s really important, that these women have their day in court, and their family gets some type of peace,” Hyman expressed. “No matter what, you can never bring someone back, but at least get a sense of justice to hopefully have some type of resolution. To talk to the families and know what they’ve experienced and what they continue to experience is horrible, and hopefully will shed some light on it, to make people aware of sexual assaults, and hopefully it will bring about some change. That is ultimately what I hope for as someone who represents women that have been sexually abused, also women that were human trafficked. These types of situations are very near and dear and important to me.”
Listen to the third season of Hyman’s podcast, Once Upon a Crime in Hollywood, on January 3.
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