by Sean Smith
Some have suggested that she was just copying Paris Hilton or even that Paris herself encouraged her. Kim’s former boyfriend Nick Cannon told Howard Stern that he suspected Kim of having something to do with the release of the tape, ‘I still think she might have even had a part to play . . .’ He wasn’t alone in thinking that.
Kim continues to be asked about the sex tape, year after year. She admitted to Oprah Winfrey that Kim Kardashian Superstar introduced her to the world, but she regretted it was in a ‘negative way’.
The public interest will never go away, but the circumstances of its release into the world revealed that behind her obvious beauty and physical attributes, Kim was a powerful and strong-willed woman capable of taking control of her destiny. She spoke of it yet again in Rolling Stone magazine in July 2015: ‘I thought about it for a long time. But when I get over something, I get over it.’
12
KEEPING UP WITH KIM
Kim was not the first Kardashian to follow in the footsteps of Paris Hilton. Her elder sister Kourtney was one of the stars of the 2005 E! reality show Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive, which was a blatant rip-off of The Simple Life, with a large helping of the hit film City Slickers thrown in. Intriguingly, it was Kim who appeared in the original trailer for the show, worried about what she was going to do without a hairdryer in the rugged Colorado landscape. In the short clip, she also asks, ‘Are there showers there?’
In the end, though, Kim didn’t do the show and it was Kourtney who set off with nine other offspring of wealthy parents to sample the delights of Steamboat Springs. At least she had a familiar face with her. Her best friend from school, Courtenay Semel, was also making her TV debut. She was the daughter of Terry and Jane Semel, who had hosted Kris and Bruce’s marriage in 1991. She was very keen for the eldest Kardashian to join her when she was cast in the show.
One of the other young women was Brittny Gastineau, the daughter of the New York Jets footballer Mark Gastineau, whom she hadn’t seen for many years. Brittny had already starred in another short-lived reality show for E! called The Gastineau Girls. Kourtney thought that Brittny would get on well with Kim and introduced them after the show had finished. She was right, because they became best friends.
During the eight-week series, the five boys and five girls were divided into two teams and made to compete against each other for rewards. The losers got nothing – a basic reality show tactic. Among the more interesting tasks was munching on bull’s testicles and giving a cow a rectal examination, which basically meant sticking your entire arm up a cow’s backside – perhaps that’s what put Kim off.
The show ran from August until October 2005, but wasn’t picked up for another season. That may well have been because E! had acquired The Simple Life after it had been dropped by Fox. There seemed little point in continuing both shows: they were too similar and Paris Hilton was a better prospect. None of the show’s cast did particular well afterwards. Brittny became best known for her friendship with Kim, while Courtenay ended up in rehab and was a target for Hollywood gossips because of her many alleged gay affairs. She said stories of flings with both her friend Lindsay Lohan and Paris were false. In an interview with Curve, the bestselling US lesbian magazine, however, she said, ‘I’d like to say that I’m kind of the Don Juan of the lesbian world.’
Kourtney hadn’t seemed the most natural performer in front of the cameras, but the relative failure of Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive didn’t put off the rest of the clan. Bruce Jenner was often on television as himself, popping up in an Olympians edition of Weakest Link and as a judge on Pet Star, the search for America’s most talented pet. Most notably, he was a contestant in the US version of I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! In the 2003 season, set in New South Wales, Bruce just missed being in the final three and was the seventh celebrity to be voted out of the jungle. The winner was Cris Judd, who would inadvertently cause some difficulties for Kim in her marriage that year. I’m a Celeb didn’t fare well in the US, not helped by problems with the live link, caused by the time difference with Australia.
Brody and Brandon Jenner, the sons from Bruce’s marriage to Linda Thompson, had starred in their own reality show on Fox called The Princes of Malibu in 2005. It wasn’t a success, although the premise was quite fun. Their mother spoiled them and thought they could do no wrong, while their stepfather, David Foster, wanted them to get proper jobs and behave responsibly.
Fox cancelled the show after screening only two of the six episodes that had been filmed. Linda had filed for divorce from Foster the day after the show premiered, which wasn’t the best timing. Brody moved on to a coming-of-age reality series called The Hills. It was a follow-up to the popular Laguna Beach: the Real Orange County and followed a group of rich young people making their way in Los Angeles. The Hills did well, although it received some criticism for appearing too scripted. Perhaps what was needed in the overcrowded reality marketplace was a combination of the two shows – the drama of a family and the chaos of young (rich) lives.
E! was just one of the networks desperate to find a winning formula. They didn’t realise that exactly what they were looking for was on their doorstep – well, almost – in Hidden Hills, Calabasas. Kris Jenner has always credited the casting director Deena Katz for realising that the mad family life of the Kardashians would make great TV after she was at the house for dinner one night. Deena had worked on Big Brother and Pet Star. She arranged a professional introduction to Ryan Seacrest, the host of American Idol, and the president of his production company, Eliot Goldberg. They successfully pitched the idea to E! Importantly, the company brought in to oversee everything and handle the daily production of the programme was Bunim/Murray, which was responsible for two of the biggest reality successes, The Real World and The Simple Life.
One of the recurring illusions surrounding the Kardashian family is the way they never seem to have to go to the lengths most wannabes have to in order to succeed. The endless phone calls, being placed on hold, waiting in reception and rejection emails seem to pass them by.
Conspiracy theorists believe that E! commissioned the show based on Kim’s new sex tape fame. The timing is very tight in terms of which came first – a true chicken or egg situation. Television experts believe that E! wouldn’t have placed a bet on an untried television programme when nobody knew what the public reaction to the tape might be. What E! did successfully was harness the media interest in Kim and use it to their advantage.
Filming for the first episode began with Kris and Bruce’s sixteenth wedding anniversary on 21 April 2007. The news that she was dropping legal proceedings against Vivid Entertainment was reported nine days later, on 30 April. By then, the sex tape was already a huge success. A few weeks later, television media started reporting that the star of the graphic sex tape was to feature in a new reality show.
The sex tape alone wasn’t enough of a hook to promote Kim and she was still referred to as Paris Hilton’s best pal and Bruce’s stepdaughter. However, the press material did say that the new series would focus on her family life and pointed out that she had nine brothers and sisters in total.
This didn’t give entirely the right impression, as the older Jenner children had very little to do with their father during his marriage to Kris. His eldest son, Burt, for instance, told Vanity Fair that he didn’t remember seeing his father more than twice a year for roughly a decade. Brandon went through periods of two or three years of not hearing from his dad. When the Northridge earthquake hit the Los Angeles area in January 1994, Brandon, then 12, told his mother that Bruce had called to check they were all right. She was delighted that he had rung, until Brandon confessed, ‘Mom, I’m just kidding.’ While he was undoubtedly a caring father to Kendall and Kylie, he didn’t attend the high school graduations of his older children. He said he wasn’t invited, while they maintain that he was.
There was a chasm in the family no matter whose recollection is correct. A reality show about all things Kardashian was hard
ly likely to improve that. The split between the two branches of Bruce’s family wouldn’t sit well in a show that was all about ‘family’ and the bond that existed between them whatever was going on in their crazy world.
The family theme would develop as the series progressed. For the moment, they needed Kim’s new-found notoriety to perk up interest in the show. In the months leading up to the autumn premiere, it was important to keep Kim in the public eye. She made it onto a list of the top ten bottoms in Hollywood, but at position number eight was well behind the winner, Jennifer Lopez, and the runner-up, Beyoncé.
She also had to refute a rumour that among the out-takes of her tape with Ray J was one in which she received what is known in the sex trade as a golden shower. ‘I’m not knocking anyone else,’ she said, ‘but I’ve never personally participated in that. I think it’s degrading.’
The publicity leading up to the launch seemed to involve either sex or Kim’s bottom. She had to counter allegations that hers had been surgically enhanced since the sex tape days. Finally, if you had missed the sex tape and the bountiful backside, there was still time for it to be announced that Kim was going to be on the cover of the December issue of Playboy in a 12-page picture spread personally chosen by Hugh Hefner.
Unsurprisingly, the first-ever episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which was broadcast on 14 October 2007, focused heavily on Kim and her rear in particular. The opening scene is a picture of her from behind, leaning over to get something out of the fridge. Her ass looks enormous, certainly several sizes bigger than when she was filmed with Ray J.
Kris says in an aside to the family, ‘I think she has a little junk in the trunk.’ That gives rise to some banter and a half-hearted ‘I hate you all’ from Kim. It is Kim who addresses the audience, ‘Welcome to my family. I am Kim Kardashian . . .’ Kris introduces herself as Kim’s manager, not everyone’s.
For the opening credits, Kim is late for the family shot and then arrives wearing a knockout red dress that completely overshadows the others. In the episode, Kim has been asked to appear on The Tyra Banks Show in New York and her mother tells her she will be asked about the sex tape. Kris, speaking directly to the camera, says, ‘As her mother I wanted to kill her, but as her manager I knew I had a job to do and I really wanted her to move past it.’
Kim explains, ‘That was with my boyfriend of three years and whatever we did in our private time was our private time and never once did we think it was going to get out.’
In an amusing scene, Kourtney pretends to be Tyra and asks her why she did it. Kim replies, ‘Because I was horny and I felt like it.’ She goes off to record the show in New York, taking her friend Brittny Gastineau along for moral support. Disappointingly, we never see any footage of Kim’s first TV interview.
We are introduced to the other members of the family, although only fleetingly to the son, Robert. Much more airtime is given to Kourtney’s handsome and tanned boyfriend, Scott Disick, whom Kris doesn’t trust.
The critical response to the show tended to be more negative than positive. The reviewer in the New York Times said, ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians is, as the title suggests, a window into a family – a family that seems to understand itself only in terms of its collective opportunism.’ She added that the show was about ‘some desperate women climbing to the margins of fame.’ Daily Variety online observed, ‘Once you get past Kim’s prominently displayed assets, there’s not much of a show here, and no discernible premise.’
The rest of the series relied heavily on the physical attributes of the female cast. In the second episode, Kris hires a nanny to help at the house and look after Kendall, 11, and Kylie, aged 10. She turns out to be a stunning blonde and completely inappropriate. The gag of the episode is that Kris hasn’t met her and doesn’t know how unsuitable she is. Bruce, settling into his role as the long-suffering dad, quickly realises that when he sees her sunbathing topless. When Kris does finally meet her, she quickly shows her the door in a plot involving some stolen jewellery. The nanny was quite obviously an actress hired for the occasion and not, as Kris said in the show, hired from a ‘reputable agency’.
She was, in fact, Bree Olson, then an up-and-coming porn star, who would later become one of the best known and most applauded in the business. In 2006 alone, she had made 16 films, including Young As They Cum 21 and Cock Craving Cuties. In 2007, she made 75, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
Casting directors often turn to actresses in the porn world when they want to find someone to play a super-sexy vixen completely at ease with taking off her clothes. In this episode, Bree, more a cute blonde than a siren figure, unselfconsciously removes her top at the pool.
Bree was hired for one day and spent 15 hours being filmed at the house. In the end, her footage amounted to little more than five minutes. This is the reality of the reality. The cameras are on the Kardashians all the time to see how they react to a situation that is often manufactured. Khloé was particularly outspoken in this instance, declaring on the phone to Kris, ‘Mom, there is a whore watching your children.’
Bree, who is an intelligent and articulate young woman, didn’t mind. She laughed, ‘I’m surprised it wasn’t worse.’ It was the reaction she was hired to generate. The producers told Bree exactly what to do, but the family was unscripted and allowed to roam free. She was instructed to help the youngsters with their homework, but to do a really bad job at it. She was also told to go into Kris’s closet and try on her jewellery.
The youngest members of the cast, Kendall and Kylie, seemed the most unaffected by what was going on around them and shrugged off the cameras. When filming stopped, they went on their computer to show Bree a puppy they were excited about getting. When the producers sent Bree down to the pool to sunbathe, the girls followed and made her play poolball for an hour.
Bree enjoyed her day and was happy to be part of it. Each of the cast gave her a hug goodbye. ‘They were super nice,’ she said. In 2011, Bree, who has given up the porn business, achieved headlines as one of actor Charlie Sheen’s girlfriends, or ‘goddesses’ as he liked to call them.
The third episode indirectly involved more porn, when the girls were hired for a photo shoot to model a new swimsuit range for Girls Gone Wild – not traditionally what the franchise was known for. Joe Francis had apparently phoned Kris to hire the girls and fly them down to his luxurious private estate, Casa Aramita, in Punta Mita, Mexico. He couldn’t appear himself, because he was in jail in Florida. A company insider recalled, ‘We decided it would be great publicity for both sides if the Kardashians were involved. We were going to fly a designer, Ashley Paige, to Mexico and the girls were going to try on the bathing suits and contribute, as if they had helped create them, and the E! cameras would follow along. It would all culminate with a billboard on Sunset Boulevard of the Kardashians in bathing suits. It was completely contrived.’
The billboard did appear, but the swimwear line was very short-lived. Buyers began to cancel orders when it became common knowledge that Joe was in jail. It did provide some lovely television moments, as Bruce had to pretend to be outraged and follow them to the location. Again, the plot line was an excuse to put Kim and her sisters in skimpy clothing. Kris and her daughters all agreed that it was ‘classy’.
In the fourth episode, Playboy rang up to ask Kim to appear on the cover. The sex tape was forgotten as Kim hesitated about whether to do it or not, although there wouldn’t have been much of a plot if she hadn’t. Again, it was deemed ‘classy’. Kim explained, ‘It was something that I felt really nervous about doing at first . . . It’s not a nude photo shoot by any stretch. It is not as revealing as some people might want. I keep it classy and covered up. I do bare my whole butt. And a little bit of my chest. But that’s it.’
Kim looked sensational for the shoot. Her modesty was protected by a strategically placed large string of beads. When the issue came out, she was wearing a lovely red swimsuit on the cover. The headline wasn’t at all subtle, t
hough, and declared: ‘Hollywood’s New Sex Star Kim Kardashian Takes It All Off’.
The strategy of promoting Kim in these first few episodes worked. E! said the programme had already reached 13 million viewers. Young women, aged 18 to 34, were hooked on the show. The vice-president of the television company who was in charge of series development, Lisa Berger, enthused, ‘The buzz around the series is huge.’ After just a month on air, Keeping Up with the Kardashians was renewed for a second season.
Kim did well in another poll in 2007. In December, the New York Daily News published a list of the ‘Top 50 Dumbest People in Hollywood’. Lindsay Lohan placed first and Kim was second. She would soon be proving everybody completely wrong.
13
DANCING PRINCESS
For a man who could sprint 50 metres up a football field in little more than 5 seconds, Reggie Bush was slow out of the blocks with Kim. She couldn’t believe that the star running back with the New Orleans Saints didn’t ask for her number when they met at the 2006 ESPY sports awards.
In July, she accompanied Bruce Jenner for the evening at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. She was definitely interested when she saw the handsome, well-muscled young man sitting with Matt Leinart. Kim knew Matt well, because he was dating Paris Hilton, and he was happy to introduce her to Reggie, who had been his college teammate at her father’s old alma mater, USC. Kim recalled that first meeting: ‘My first impression of Reggie was “This guy is so quiet. Why is he not taking my number?” Matt tried to set us up, but it took a while.’
