At this point, it feels as if there is very little that we don’t know about the Kardashians. After all, their lives have been documented for public consumption for well over a decade.
Yet, a new documentary looking at the family has revealed several fascinating things about the Kardashian-Jenners. The Kardashians: Billion Dollar Dynasty charts the rise (and rise) of the family who were one of the OGs of reality TV, from Kim Kardashian’s humble stylist beginnings to their now-billion pound empire.
When Keeping up with the Kardashians launched in 2007, Kim’s sex tape had already been widely released - but did you know that she was “in tears” when she found out about it? Or that the release of the sex tape cinched the decision to put the family on air?
From staging a “flour bomb” to the family reportedly being in “massive credit card debt” here are some of the biggest revelations from the Channel 4 doc.
The idea that women don't deserve their fame because they made a sex tape is rooted in misogyny.
It would be the sex tape that launched her career, but Kim was reportedly beside herself when she found out that her intimate video, which she shot with former boyfriend Ray J when she was 21, was going to be released publicly.
“She was in Australia at the beach with Paris [Hilton],” former editor of Life & Style magazine Dan Wakeford said. “So we called her, and Kim was in tears. She was absolutely in pieces, but she admitted there was a sex tape.”
“The Kardashians were in massive credit card debt, and there were a bunch of stories that had come out about that,” TMZ reporter Dax Holt claimed. “They needed money and this show changed their entire lives.”
He added that they were using a “facade house” as Kris Jenner’s home during the first season of the show.
“It was this big, beautiful home near Runyon Canyon, that was very visible, but it wasn’t even where the Kardashians lived,” Holt said. “And I think that was ‘we want to put on more money than we necessarily have which, I kind of love. The whole Kim Kardashian fake it ‘til you make it really worked out for them.”
Ted Harbert, executive producer at E! Network admitted that E! was a “successful but struggling network” at the time, but that they were keen to pick up Keeping up with the Kardashians and that Kim’s sex tape release sealed the deal.
“The sex tape did have relevance to my decision,” Harbert said. “I was a little worried that we’d be criticised for putting Kim on [the show]. On the other hand, I also thought that the sex tape might
attract viewers who want to know ‘OK who is this woman?’ But that can help elevate curiosity.”
Before Keeping up with the Kardashians became the biggest reality show on television, there was The Hills. In The Kardashians: Billion Dollar Dynasty, The Hill’s antagonist Heidi Montag explained that Kim once came over to her place to organise her closet.
“I remember meeting Kim, I think the first time was when we were filming for The Hills, and she was coming over to organise my closet,” Heidi explained. “I knew her as Paris’s friend…and she was so nice and had a great work ethic. She never drank, she was so on point, she knew everybody’s name. Just a very professional person.”
When Kim launched her perfume in 2012, she was “flour bombed” while walking the red carpet - but Kim’s former PR strategist Sheerez Hassan said that this was all staged.
“You’re going to be fine, you’re going to be safe, but we’re going to create a media moment,” Hassan said he told Kim.
He added: “If we create media gold, then guess what’s going to happen? Everyone’s going to talk about your perfume. Everyone’s going to buy it. Are the team in on it? Of course they’re in on it.”
“They [the Kardashian-Jenner family] were really targeting fame, and studying it and taking it very seriously,” Heidi said. “They were in it to win it from the very beginning.”
Eliot Goldberg, co-creator and executive producer of Keeping up with the Kardashians, says he was “actively seeking” a celebrity family for a reality show at the time, and that the pitch from the Kardahians was unlike any he’d received before, and that in their initial pitch it was “like watching a performance”. This is when he knew he had to make a show featuring them.
