by Jenner, Kris
The next morning Deena called me and said, “Can you get over to Ryan’s office?”
“When?” I asked.
“Now!” she said.
I jumped in my car and drove right over.
Ryan Seacrest had an office over at E! in this ginormous, gorgeous, sort of modern brick building on Wilshire Boulevard. I drove down Wilshire and couldn’t believe I was going to talk to Ryan Seacrest about doing a reality show about our family. I pulled up and gave my car to the valet, then went up in the elevator to the lobby and this enormous area where you wait until someone comes down to get you. I sat in that room for five minutes or so, looking around at pictures of the iconic people who had done shows on E!, including Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.
An assistant came down and took me to Eliot Goldberg’s office. Eliot was Ryan’s producing partner and the president of Ryan’s company. He asked me to tell him what our show might be like. I winged it the best I could, saying that it would be a blow-by-blow look at our crazy, loving, fun, and incredibly close family. By the time Ryan walked in, it felt like I actually might be onto something.
I told them that it would be a show about Kourtney, Kimberly, Khloé, Kendall, Kylie, Bruce, Rob, and me. I was hoping to get some extended family members, too—including my mom and hopefully some of our friends.
“The family dynamic is what would make this a special show, and it is what we need to focus on,” I told Ryan and Eliot. There was so much media coverage swirling around Kim then, both positive and negative, that we knew that we had to act fast and take advantage of the moment. “Timing is everything in entertainment and pop culture,” I remember saying. “The Osbournes were so successful in their show,” I added, “and we think we could have the same kind of success. The girls would be the stars of the show, but all of us around the girls will be the ones that people can relate to. We will be able to broaden our demographic and our audience because, together, we span all kinds of age groups. We could cover ten to one hundred.”
They were nodding agreement, which I took as a good sign.
“This sounds like a project that could be really, really fun,” Ryan and Eliot told me.
Just goes to show: passion can be as powerful as preparation. Other than the informal pilot that I shot, I had never done anything remotely like a reality TV show before. But I knew that if we could come up with a format, we would have ourselves a TV show. And it would be a hit. I thought about the show in terms much bigger than just the girls. I thought this could definitely be a family show, because anytime you do a show with that many personalities, you are bound to have both the funny and the dramatic elements that can appeal to more people.
Ryan is one of those guys who get very excited and animated—he has great energy—and I could tell he “got” it. He had a vision. When you are pitching a show to someone, you want them to get on your bandwagon and see the same thing you are seeing in your head. It’s organic. And Ryan and Eliot GOT it. They just did. It was one of those magical moments where everything clicked.
I was feeling so positive about the meeting, I pressed my luck a bit.
“I’d like to be an executive producer,” I said. “I need to have my hands in this. I need to have some control.”
“Let’s do it,” Ryan and Eliot said.
The next day, Ryan took the show idea to E!, since that was where his company had a production deal.
A few hours later I got the call from Ryan and Eliot.
“Congratulations!” they said. “We have a show.”
That night, I invited the entire family for dinner in Hidden Hills. When everyone was at the dinner table, I stood up. “Family, you’re not going to believe this,” I said, “but we got our own reality show, and it’s going to be on E!.”
Kim and Khloé jumped up from their chairs, they were so happy.
Kourtney was a little quiet, because she was somewhat hesitant. She had just met her new boyfriend, Scott Disick, at that point. But she’s a team player, and she eventually said, “Okay, Mom, I’ll do it.”
“You don’t have to do it,” I reassured her. “Nobody has to do it, but this is what I really, really want to do.” Every single one of them said yes, they would do it.
Bruce was still sitting in his chair, dumbstruck.
“What?” he said. “We’re going to do what?!” He shook his head. “I am a motivational speaker. I am an Olympic athlete! I am going to do a reality show about my family?”
“You won’t regret it, honey, I promise you. You won’t regret it.”
Bruce is such a chill guy. He just shook his head.
“Oh, God,” he said, preparing for another roller-coaster ride. “You guys are crazy. Okay, why not? I’ll try it.”
The morning after we sold the show, I woke up with butterflies in my stomach. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride! I thought to myself. I didn’t know what to expect. I also knew I was going back to work on a whole different level than I had been at the store. I knew I was going to be running everyone’s careers.
I was about to meld my roles as Mom and Manager: I was about to become a Momager.
Up until that point, Kim had been doing club appearances on her own, and she was very popular in that scene. The clubs were clamoring for her. She was also getting offers for deals with clothing manufacturers. The positive attention was thrilling for all of us. But I knew that once all the girls were on a television show, these opportunities were going to multiply exponentially, and quickly. That meant I needed to gear up for handling something very big, because I knew this was going to take 150 percent of my energy, effort, and creativity. Whatever it took, I wanted this venture to be a huge success.
First step? Meet our new producers at Bunim/Murray productions. Bunim/Murray was the production company partnering with Ryan and Eliot and E! to actually film and make our show.
The first person from Bunim/Murray who came walking into my house was Farnaz Farjam, our new show runner and producer, whose résumé included The Simple Life. She brought her entire crew, along with Jeff Jenkins and Jon Murray. Jon Murray is one of the owners and founders of Bunim/Murray, and Jeff Jenkins helps run the company.
I was so nervous meeting all of them that night. I made drinks and my famous guacamole and chips and we put out a little spread for all of them. I loved Farnaz the minute she walked into my house, but I was a little taken aback: she was so young, beautiful, and sweet.
This is the girl who is going to run our show? I thought. She would come to be one of my closest friends.
I didn’t really understand how important that first meeting was, but because of our chemistry and the connection we all felt that first night, it turned out to be a great thing. We had a great night: we talked about our lives, where we lived, our Hidden Hills dream house. They asked us our thoughts on what the show could be. It was a really special night. We felt like a team already.
Next, we went to the Bunim/Murray team’s offices—and their drawing boards—and started putting together the necessary camera crews and sound teams and pulling together the actual people who would make our show possible. They started talking to us about how the daily work would go: hair, makeup, microphones on every morning. They asked for one promise from us: no matter what happened, the cameras would continue rolling.
The first day of filming came a month later. Thirty days after we signed on with Ryan Seacrest and E!, a camera crew was at my house. On Day 1, we shot our show titles. Show titles are the iconic images that open every episode of a show. We stood in front of our house and there were cameras, booms, jibs, microphones, and 150 or so production people milling about—and all of us in full hair and makeup and dressed to the nines. We still have the same show title—the scenes that play before our theme song, a whimsical, whistled tune—the perfect reflection of the usually chaotic energy around us.
Here’s how the show title goes: the camera bounces between close-ups of our faces and individual shots of us while we attempt to arrange ourselves
as a family in front of a backdrop of Hollywood. There’s a lot of shuffling and elbowing and nudging involved as we fight for the best angle and shot of each of us. Bruce and I are in matching plum colors (my dress, his shirt). Kendall and Kylie are dressed in glittery miniskirts and animal prints. Khloé towers above the rest of us in glamorous, sparkly gold sequins. Kourtney is in a little pewter dress. Rob says, “I need someone to make me laugh.”
“Where’s Kim?” I ask.
“Kim is always late,” says one of the girls off camera.
Finally, Kim rushes up and inserts herself in the shot, hands on hips and filling out a ruby red Herve Leger dress, looking fabulous as always. When we are finally assembled, little Kylie pulls on a rope and the backdrop of Los Angeles falls to reveal a shot of the front of our Cape Cod dream house.
“That’s it, we’re done,” says a crew member off camera.
“Money,” says another.
Everything and everyone was in place, but we were having trouble coming up with a name for the show. All of us were trying to think of the perfect name: our family, Ryan and Eliot’s company, everyone at Bunim/Murray. In the meantime, our show runner, Farnaz, was running in a hundred different directions trying to catch us all on film. Kim was in Vegas, I was running down to San Diego to visit my mom, Kourtney was in Malibu, and Khloé was running around Beverly Hills . . . crises, comedy, and cameras following us everywhere we went. We would go to meetings, and then Kim would need to rush right out for a different meeting—at the Playboy Mansion, for example. Bruce was driving carpool for Kendall and Kylie while juggling his own career and his regular golf game. We each had our own crazy schedule. The crew was like, “Oh my God, these people are driving us crazy! There’s so many of them and they all go in different directions!”
One day Farnaz was late to a meeting. She came rushing in and said, breathlessly, “I’m sorry I am late. I’m just having a really hard time keeping up with the Kardashians.”
Everyone stopped talking. There was total silence. Everyone turned and stared at her, and she said, “What?!” Then she got it. “Oh my God, that’s it: Keeping Up with the Kardashians!” Farnaz said.
I wasn’t in the meeting. When they told me the name, I loved it, but I said, “But what about Bruce Jenner?”
“Oh, it’s going to be fine,” they said, and of course, Bruce being Bruce, it was.
We wanted the show to be mostly about the girls. That their family just happens to include a stepdad who has his own name and celebrity, well, the producers thought that was just an added bonus. Keeping Up with the Kardashians and the Jenners just didn’t have the same ring to it. So we went with Kardashians alone. Everyone, including Bruce, knew it was the perfect name. Bruce is such a good sport, and he would never let ego get in the way of something like that.
The producers were counting on our lives being interesting enough to be entertaining. We knew that for our reality show, we needed to show our life in full. In order to set that up, the producers needed to know all about our life. They were asking us questions: “What’s going on? What are you guys doing? What do we need to film?” They needed to know all our comings and goings so they could get production clearance for any restaurants, clubs, hospitals, hotels, office buildings, and more. If we had a doctor appointment they thought might be interesting, they needed to make sure they could shoot it.
One day I called a family meeting.
When we were all together at Hidden Hills, I said, “Look, guys. We have to make a decision right now if we are going to go on this journey together and let everything hang out. I think the only way to make this show successful is to really be real about it, and if stuff happens—and I don’t have a crystal ball, so I don’t even know what that could mean—we have to be able to roll with it and let them tape it and show it, no matter what. Okay?”
I looked around the room. They all stared at me at first, surely thinking, What has she gotten us into now? But then everyone said yes; they all agreed to let the cameras keep rolling, no matter what. What did we have to fear? Nothing. We have no skeletons; everything about us is out in the open anyway. We all thought, Why not? We were now off to the races, ready to face the cameras, waiting for something wild, crazy, funny, dramatic, and exciting to happen. We didn’t have to wait long.
Our show premiered on October 4, 2007. The first episode began with Bruce and my sixteenth wedding anniversary. But the show opened with me talking about Kim’s ass. The opening shot showed Kim from behind, looking in my fridge, and me commenting on the “junk in her trunk” to the other family members in my family room. Khloé immediately called me out. “Mom, she’s always had an ass,” she said. “Where did this come from?” Kourtney called me “catty.” “I hate you all!” Kim declared.
Then we cut to voice-overs and a montage of scenes about the main characters: our family.
“Welcome to my family. I’m Kim Kardashian. My sisters say I’m a bitch. But I always have their best interests at heart,” Kim said.
“I’m Kourtney. I’m the oldest and the most mature.”
“I’m Kris Jenner. I’m the mom and Kim’s manager. Say what you want, but I know what’s best for my kids . . . and my husband.”
“I’m Bruce Jenner, and I am a pushover for my family . . . up to a point.”
Me again: “And then Bruce and I together have Kendall and Kylie Jenner.”
“So it’s six kids and two crazy parents,” said Kim. “We’re the modern-day Brady Bunch with a kick. There’s a lot of baggage that comes with us. But it’s like Louis Vuitton baggage . . . You always want it.”
The first season went by in a blur, beginning with our sixteenth anniversary party. One guest was our dear friend Robin Antin, creator and the choreographer of the Pussycat Dolls, whom Kim took into my bedroom to show her the anniversary gift she had given us as a gag: a stripper pole. If you remember, stripper poles were all the rage back then; even Oprah had Teri Hatcher on her show to demonstrate the newest exercise craze: pole dancing. It wasn’t meant to be strip-club sexy; it was just meant to be an exercise tool to go along with the newest exercise craze. Robin started demonstrating a new routine on the pole, when Kylie, then ten, walked in and began imitating Robin’s routine. It turned out to be a little more salacious than intended, and clearly Kylie was just being a kid. But when Bruce found her in there, he hauled her out quickly.
The cameras kept rolling. When the episode aired, people were absolutely outraged that I had my ten-year-old daughter on my stripper pole. If it had happened without cameras there, nobody would have flinched. Everyone was just talking in my bedroom, and Kylie was only trying to be included. It just looked scandalous when taken out of context.
During that first season, Kim made her first live television talk show appearance on The Tyra Banks Show. Not long after that, we got a call from Playboy: they wanted Kim to model for a spread. My instinct was to say yes. Playboy is iconic and historic. Marilyn Monroe was on the very first cover. Farrah Fawcett, Janet Jackson, Cindy Crawford, Ursula Andress, Jayne Mansfield, and Linda Evans all did Playboy. It was an honor for Kim to be among the list of spectacular, beautiful women who have posed for Playboy. Kim was hesitant at first, but I assured her that she would not have to take all her clothes off. After the pictures came back, Hef was very pleased with them, but he wanted more photos of Kim—this time wearing less. Hef invited us to the Playboy Mansion and, camera still rolling, convinced Kim to do a second shoot, this time wearing nothing but a dozen long strands of strategically placed pearls. Determined to show me how it felt to be naked in front of the camera, Kim as a joke arranged for me to have my own photo shoot wrapped in American flags, wearing nothing but Bruce’s gold medal.
Here my daughter had posed for Playboy, which was a controversial move. But for her to follow that by playing this joke on me spoke volumes and set the tone of the show. Kim came back at me with humor, because we love each other, and that photo shoot was yet another milestone for me. It showed me that no ma
tter what we went through and no matter how much pain it caused, we could always overcome any kind of adversity through humor, laughter, and our love for each other. It also showed me that our show didn’t need to be a train wreck. It could be funny! It could be about our family and how we get through things with laughter and love. It could show audiences that we’re a real family, with real problems and real happy endings. This incident—Kim posing for Playboy, followed by me posing with the gold medal—taught us not to be afraid to make fun of ourselves. We were having a great time; why not show it? I knew right then that everything was all going to be okay.
Working with and for my children was a huge step in this experience. I realized that if I was going to tackle this whole situation and be there and manage my family, I had to commit emotionally, physically, and intellectually 150 percent. There was no way to do this half-assed. I knew I could not do this as a hobby, or part-time, or for just a couple of hours a day. This job required that I live, breathe, eat, sleep it 24/7, and once I decided to do that and make that emotional commitment to myself and to my family, there was no turning back. I was not only a mother, daughter, and wife but also a producer, a manager, negotiator, a publicist, a business manager, a stylist, and at times a caterer and a set decorator. Suddenly, I had to keep track of everyone’s schedules and even tell the girls when to work out.
I was developing a brand, managing all these people who were practically living under the same roof, and what I didn’t realize was that when things went wrong, which was inevitable, the natives would get restless. We knew how to deal with each other on the mother-daughter level, but adding the business element had its challenges. I had to learn how to deal with each child and his or her needs individually. They each have different goals, expectations, and personalities. It was a dance, and I had to dance differently with each one. Of my daughters, Kourtney is a tango, spicy and difficult at times. Khloé is a salsa, sassy and all over the place, perpetually changing directions. Kim is a waltz, easy, smooth, and beautiful.
