Watching family drama on The Kardashians is therapeutic for Khloe but unsettling for Kourtney
LOS ANGELES – The Kardashians pioneered celebrity-driven reality television with their show Keeping Up With The Kardashians (2007 to 2021), which launched a billion-dollar media empire and turned them into household names.
So the producers of their new series, The Kardashians (2022 to present), are likely only half-joking when they say they hope to keep this show going “till North’s marriage” – referring to the 10-year-old daughter of American star Kim Kardashian, 42, and former husband and American rap star Kanye West, 46.
The producers and two of the Kardashian sisters, Khloe and Kourtney, spoke earlier in 2023 at a Los Angeles event to promote the series ahead of its fourth season.
It returns to Disney+ on Thursday and continues to follow them through their personal and business dealings.
And Khloe reveals that watching one’s family drama play out on screen is like a therapy session that audience members are invited to witness.
For instance, an episode in an earlier season “turned out to be very therapeutic for me because it was the first time I spoke about my second pregnancy in a public way”, says the 39-year-old American personality.
She and her sisters Kim and Kourtney, 44, mother Kris Jenner, 67, and half-sisters Kendall Jenner, 27, and Kylie Jenner, 25, are the most famous members of the clan.
“It was important for me to express my journey, but in a place where I felt safe and could be vulnerable and explain why I kept it a secret for so long, because it was so hard for me to compute what was happening,” says Khloe, who has two children, aged five and one, with Canadian-American basketball player Tristan Thompson, 32.
“I’m grateful for that.”
And despite their fame and wealth – Kim is reportedly worth US$1.8 billion (S$2.46 million) and Kylie, US$750 million, thanks to endorsements and their clothing and make-up lines – the Kardashian-Jenners are pretty down-to-earth, says executive producer and showrunner Danielle King.
“When you really get to know and spend time with them, which I do every single day, what I’m surprised by are the things we have in common,” she adds.
“These are ordinary women with extraordinary stories.”
But Kourtney admits that having one’s dirty laundry aired on TV can be unsettling.
“I feel like it is really not the way that we are meant to live. You see and hear people sometimes talking about you, and to actually watch things like that is interesting,” she says.
