Many people questioned why Variety would even THINK of inviting Kim Kardashian to be part of their ‘Actors On Actors’ series and partnering her up with none other than Chloe Sevigny, an actress who’s been in thte business for at least 25 years, when she’s, quote on quote, not even an actress. But the fact of the matter is, she now is a professional actress, all thanks to Ryan Murphy, who cast her in a starring role on the latest season of ‘American Horror Story’ with Emma Roberts.
Some of you might say that my previous post is irrelevant because how could we possibly take any advice from a woman as young as Joey King when it comes to our work ethic as women? You might not even know it, but this woman has been working and living an adult life since she was 4 years old. But since some of you might not be as open minded, I figured I’d include a woman who’s older and more mature than a young woman in her 20’s, and that would be none other than Kim. I figured I’d start with one controversial topic of discussion to another, because….why not?
But who is Kim Kardashian?
Kim got her start in fame when she was Paris Hilton’s assistant back in the 2000’s. But she came from a privileged family. Her father, Robert Kardashian Sr. famously defended OJ Simpson and represented him as his lawyer at his trial for Nicole Brown Simpson murder in the 90’s. Nicole was Kris Jenner’s best friend, and Kendall Jenner was given the middle name ‘Nicole’ in her honour. Simpson was acquitted of his crimes, much to everyone’s surprise, including Robert Kardashian himself.
Kim always wanted fame and attention. She always wanted to be known. She craved for it, and she did everything she could to achieve that goal. She once even called paparazzi and pretended to enter the same hotel as Britney Spears to have a meal with her. In reality, she never actually met the singer. Being Paris Hilton’s assistant certainly got her foot out the door, but it was actually her sex tape that she made with her ex-boyfriend, Ray J.
It was in 2007 that Kim, along with the rest of the Kardashian-Jenner family, got her big break when Kris Jenner got Ryan Seacrest to produce their show, ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’. Despite a rating of 2.9 out of 10 on IMDB, the show got great success as it lasted for 14 seasons and ended in 2021. Their reality TV career didn’t end there, though, as they’re now on season 5 of Hulu’s, ‘The Kardashians’.
But Kim isn’t just a reality star. She’s also a businesswoman, a lawyer, and a mother of 4. Now in her 40’s, she can add ‘actress’ to her long resume. Say what you want about her, but she’s a hard-working woman, and yes, even talented. When she was booed at Tom Brady’s Roast Special, she took in stride and continued on with her scheduled presentation roasting her rumoured ex-boyfriend. It takes a strong f*cking woman to continue on as if nothing happened after being booed by such a crowded room.
And speaking of Ryan Murphy…
Personally, when I think of Ryan Murphy, I think of ‘Glee’, the musical teen drama that aired between 2009 and 2013, was led by Lea Michele, and co-starred the late Cory Monteith and Naya Rivera. But he’s created so many works of art since then, including ‘Scream Queens’ also starring Lea Michele and Emma Roberts, and, as I mentioned before, ‘American Horror Story’. And before he asked Kardashians to work together, he developed his own spin on the OJ Simpson trial, ‘The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story’. It aired in 2016, and starred the likes of Sterling K. Brown, Cuba Gooding Jr., Nathan Lane, and David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian Sr. himself. Of the series, Kim told Chloe Sevigny, her Variety’s ‘Actors On Actors’ partner:
‘I loved it. Some people were over and they hadn’t seen it — I watched it years and years ago — and I wanted to see if my recollection was right on the portrayal of my dad. I thought it was just done so well. I remember asking Ryan, who were your sources? Because that was my dad’s exact bracelet. That was our home! They actually rented the home that we grew up in at that period of time. Little things were wrong, but minimal. But it was just fascinating to watch and see it from a different perspective, especially now, since I’m in law school. Seeing it from a legal point of view is just fascinating.’
And now…
Now, all of a sudden, she’s an actress. It came out of nowhere. I think the entire world was surprised. But not Kardashian herself. Of her new endeavour, she told Sevigny, ‘My feeling was that “OK, every year I want to do something that makes me terribly uncomfortable,” to where I can just grow and hopefully be a better person because of that terrifying experience. And the first one was “SNL,” and I just was like, “I don’t know if I can do it.” I had said no a few times. And then finally I got the confidence to say, “I’m going to try it. It makes me so uncomfortable, but it’s just a week and in one week it’ll be over.”’
This was actually Kardashian’s response when Sivegny told her that she loved how much Kardashian loved working. In Kardashian’s own words, work is her “happy place”. This is something that’s very evident in her. She really is unstoppable. She now has four projects in the works. It takes a certain type of woman to be able to work so much and have 4 children at home. And before you come at me and say she has a sh*t amount of help, with Nannies, chefs, and so on and so forth, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s their mother and that she’s there for her children.
It all came at a cost…
Kim got what she wanted. She wanted the fame, she got it. She wanted a long-lasting relationship and marriage, she got it. She wanted to have children, she got it. Everything she’s ever achieved, though, came to her at a cost. In 2016, she was robbed at gunpoint in Paris after she was posting photos of herself flaunting her jewellery. She’s never been seen wearing any jewellery and hasn’t flaunted herself and her materialism in any way since then. The thieves stole everything, including Kardashian’s wedding and engagement rings. The most heartbreaking part of it all, though, is that they stole a piece of jewellery that was gifted to her by her father before his death. Luckily, that piece of jewellery fell on the ground as the thieves left the premises, and it was returned to Kardashian.
And, of course, we can’t sit through this blog post and talk about Kim’s marriage to Kanye West. Kim and Kanye, previously known as Kimye, were married between 2014 and 2021. To say that Kanye, now known as Ye, was obsessed with Kim would be an understatement. I’d say he was TOO obsessed with her. He was a narcissistic a**hole, both during and after their relationship. He was constantly putting her down throughout their entire relationship, and it was shown through ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’. When Kim went on to date SNL alum, Pete Davidson in 2021, Kanye went on to harass both her and him throughout their entire relationship until the duo broke up in August of the following year. It wasn’t even harassment, but rather abuse. He only got quiet when he married his now-wife, Bianca Censori.
The former couple has 4 children. But the road to parenthood, particularly the rad to motherhood for Kim, wasn’t smooth sailing. No, she didn’t have trouble conceiving. But she did experience pregnancy complications. After she had her oldest, North, she was told by doctors that her next pregnancy would be life-threatening. She still decided to have her second baby on her own. When she was pregnant with her second child back in 2015, Kardashian opened up in interview, ‘I have been very open and honest about my pregnancy. This pregnancy, I’m definitely scared for my delivery, but trying my best to be hopeful and not stress out too much! Last pregnancy, I had a condition called preeclampsia, which is a serious condition you can get during pregnancy. It causes your body and face to swell, and that was very uncomfortable for me. I had early-onset preeclampsia and I had to deliver at 34 weeks, almost six weeks early.’
About 5% of women develop this disease during pregnancy, and complications can arise following birth as well, just like they did for Kardashian. She opened up in that same interview in 2015, ‘My placenta stayed attached inside my uterus, which is a condition called placenta accreta. This is a high-risk condition that happens when the placenta grows too deeply into the uterine wall. My doctor had to stick his entire arm in me and detach the placenta with his hand, scraping it away from my uterus with his fingernails. My mom was crying; she had never seen anything like this before. They say that this is what some women died from as a result of childbirth back in the day, without proper care. I’m so thankful that my doctor was able to catch this and address the issue immediately,” Kim continued, adding that the followup surgeries after this event made conceiving again very difficult. “I have amazing doctors that helped me through the entire process and I’m so grateful I was able to conceive again!’
Kardashian wasn’t able to conceive again as the two pregnancies were deemed to be too much, and she had her next two children via surrogacy. She had a very hard time accepting the fact that she wasn’t the one carrying her children. It was especially hard during the first surrogacy. And before you say that she has no right to complain or have hard time altogether, please remember that money can buy a lot of things, but it can’t buy happiness, and it can’t take away all your problems. I actually have a lot of empathy for Kim Kardashian. She’s been through a lot. It takes a strong f*cking woman to go through what she did, and still stand strong.
And to add to all that, Kardashian struggles with the autoimmune disease, psoriatic arthritis. On an episode of ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’, which I watched, Kim revealed that she went to see a doctor after she suffered several symptoms that just didn’t feel right to her. Her doctor was initially worried that she might have either lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. I remember watching the episode where it showed Kardashian at a restaurant not being able to open a water bottle and needing help to be fed by her friend because she couldn’t hold the fork. I have a family member who struggles with rheumatoid arthritis, and as I watched that scene, all I could think was, ‘Is this RA that I’m seeing?’ It all just looked so familiar to me. That’s not to say that psoriatic arthritis is easy to live with. It’s not. In fact, both types of arthritises are similar, in a way. I have a friend who struggles with psoriatic arthritis, and she was a big, big help when my family member was going the diagnosis themselves. I don’t know what my family would’ve done without her help at the time before the actual official diagnosis.
Let’s go back…
And I don’t mean going back in time, but rather to Kardashian’s interview with Chloe Sevigny on Variety’s ‘Actors On Actors’. Throughout their entire conversation, Kardashian and Sevigny mostly connected on their mutual respect for Ryan Murphy. Kardashian, on her part, couldn’t stop praising him for taking a chance on her, someone who never had experience in acting, and actually listening to her on anything that didn’t feel right to her in the filming process. This goes back to my point that I made in the Anne Hathaway related blog post where I ask, ‘Do women REALLY need men?’ Kardashian has made a name for herself all on her own. Yes, she comes from privilege, but she’s the one who made herself and the rest of her family even more successful than they already were. She never needed a man, much to Kanye’s disappointment and dismay. That’s not to say she doesn’t need love in her life. But she did need a man like Murphy to take that chance on her and believe in her.
In general, though, we should just have people around us that believe in us without limiting us in what we’re capable of achieving. It’s especially true for women. In the interview, Kardashian tells Sevigny that she’s had people that have worked with her for a very long time; hair, makeup, styling, and even publicists. Throughout her 20 year career, Kardashian has had only two stylists. She opened up to Sevigny, ‘I’ve had two. One always told me to be more realistic about my goals, and just didn’t believe in me. And I just was like — you kind of believe them for a minute. But once I got a little bit of confidence and figured out what I wanted to do, I just changed.’
The thing about Kardashian is that even though she’s prob ably the most hated person in the entertainment industry, she’s also very smart, kind, and has her head on her shoulders. She knows what she wants and goes for it no matter who doubts her. The fact that she has so many people around her that have worked for her for a long time, some from the very beginning of her career, says a lot about her character. No one wants to work with an a**hole. Some of the people that work with her were initially encouraged NOT to work with her strictly based on her reputation, and nevertheless, they took a chance on her, and are now very successful and happy where they are. Sometimes you have to take that leap of faith, and not only believe in yourself, but others as well when others don’t.
If I could take away anything from Kim Kardashian’s ‘Actors On Actors’ interview with Chloe Sevigny, it’s that the only person that’s limiting you is YOUR OWN DAMN SELF. My son is a big fan of any movie that has dancing and/or singing in it. One movie he’s a fan of is ‘Work It’s with Sabrina Carpenter and Jordan Fisher. There’s one specific scene in the movie where Carpenter and Fisher’s characters go to see disabled people dance freestyle. Every time we watch the movie, I tell my son, ‘You see these dancers in wheelchairs and crutches? They’re dancing. Disabled people can dance too, and that’s because they’re not limiting themselves. Remember, the only person that can ever limit you is yourself.’ I tell him that every single day. This is something I not only teach him, but something that I remind myself of every day. Watching Kim Kardashian’s interview reminded me that not just as a disabled person, but as a woman as well. So no matter how much we can’t stand Kim Kardashian’s, we should all strive to be like her when we grow up.
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Oh wooow…. I am not a big fan of Kardashians but this article is very interesting.
Kim is a hustler, that is for sure!
while i have never been a Kardashians’ fan (the show or generally as celebrities), i do admire Kim.. she is a powerhouse by herself!