Original subtitles

Kourtney, Khloe.

Everything you see of the Kardashian

today has been planned.

World domination next?

Maybe.

Everything is a strategy.

These are master marketers.

Hi.

The whole fam is here.

Kim takes her photo, and boom,

on to networking like a pro.

This is the story of how one family

obsessed with fame conquered the world of celebrity.

They get made fun of, derided, look down on,

but like, they monetize the thing

that people ridicule them for.

It's ingenious.

Modern American celebrity is our equivalent

of the Gods on Olympus, and the Kardashians,

consciously or not, exploited that.

But their journey to the top

has been fraught with accusations and scandal.

Here is the road map.

Put out a sex tape, the world will know your name.

So you're launching a perfume.

Then we have to disrupt this event, are the team on it?

Of course they were in on it.

When Kim and Kris got married, it was a 72 day marriage.

Kim, Kim, how do you feel?

And the press just ate her up.

I thought for sure like, oh, this might be

the beginning of the end for them.

Kim, Kim.

Kim to your left, to your left, Kim.

I definitely think after the 72 day marriage scandal,

that she was like, the next move I make

has got to be important, and it's got to stick.

The whole world knows one of the most famous people now,

so famous, so successful, so rich and she's single.

Kanye West was turned on by Kim Kardashian's power.

It was a power trip that made him fall in love.

Kimye wasn't just a cute celebrity nickname.

That was an enterprise, a huge one.

Kim, Yankee hat.

When Kim Kardashian ended that 72 day marriage,

Kanye wasted zero time, swooping in there and wooing her,

and the way that he did it was very public.

He released like, a mixtape and said something like,

I fell in love with Kim as she fell in love with him,

and everyone was like,

is Kanye talking about Kim Kardashian?

The couple are seen out in public together

when Kanye invites Kim to see his show

at Paris fashion week.

Kim, how was the show?

Did you enjoy it?

Once they became a couple,

everyone wanted to know everything, everything.

With the public intrigued

by the latest celebrity couple,

it wasn't long before their relationship became reality.

In this telling moment from the Kardashians TV show,

viewers got a hint of how Kim was willing

for Kanye to take the lead.

Oh yes, yes, but shouldn't I just keep this

for like, my daughter one day?

He was like, you're beautiful but your clothes are not.

So he went through her closet and got rid of like,

all her stuff and Kim used to wear like girly stuff,

pink little dresses and these shoes and these like,

horrid gaudy Louis Vuitton bags and he got rid of it all.

Kim, you look beautiful, Kim.

I think that Kanye also really taught Kim Kardashian

how to be an uber-celebrity too.

All of a sudden, Kim is sitting front row

at New York Fashion Week, which you know, is a coveted seat.

I mean, she's sitting right there next to Anna Wintour.

Like, it was colossal.

Always from the beginning there were people who thought

that embracing the Kardashians was a sign of the downfall

of the golden age of magazines.

It was like the peasants storming the Bastille,

but Kanye wasn't like the average celebrity

who came to shows.

When he came to fashion week, he would go to every show.

He would go to small young designers here.

So he really I think was accepted.

We considered him part of the fashion world because you,

the same hundred people go from New York to London

to Milan to Paris.

We share cars, we sit next to each other.

You really got to know him.

Kim's acceptance into the fashion elite

marked a turning point for the whole family.

Their influence could no longer be ignored.

People realised that if Kim shared something on Twitter

or on Instagram, that it had a huge impact,

and that became more and more important to magazines

and nobody does that like the Kardashians.

My name is Larry Hackett.

I was editor of "People" magazine from 2006 until 2014,

and I recall in the last couple of years,

the growth of the telephone just becoming something

we didn't know what to do about.

Once the telephone became something where all of your news

could be in your hand, you didn't have to go to your desktop

and you're going to be getting fundamentally the same news

on the website that you are in the magazine.

It's just a death knell for the industry.

What's amazing about the Kardashians is that

with each development, they always kind of seem to sit

at the intersection, of some new technology.

The resistance to the notion that they don't have any talent

starts to fall away, because they're just feeding

these beasts of coverage that people want to see.

The number one thing that I used to get all the time,

Kardashians have no talent.

They can't act, they can't sing, they can't model.

They don't know anything.

If the Kardashians have the power to say,

change your toothpaste from Colgate to Crest,

of course that's talent.

For at least 10 years,

I was working extremely close with Kim.

At the time the number one

social media platform was Twitter.

It was the power of real time.

If you can give content to your followers,

you can speak to your followers, have a direct communication

with your followers, now I know who's watching me,

now I know who my fans are.

Then all I have to do, is if I wanna sell something

to my fans who I speak to every single day,

they're gonna end up buying it.

While the full value of social media

was being discovered, Kim was solidifying a partnership

that would help her popularity soar.

Preparations are under way

in Florence, Italy, for Saturday's wedding

of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.

The couple known as Kimye rented

the 16th century Belvedere Fort.

I think that they both bet into each other.

I think they both realised the power of their partnership.

I think it's fair to say that Kim added some stability

to Kanye's life, probably at a time that he needed it.

He brought his star power.

He brought a totally new audience to her,

and that fan base is huge and powerful.

Having created a story that people

were once again willing to invest in,

Kim was primed to make her biggest cash-in to date.

If you're Kim Kardashian and the whole world is obsessed

with the fact that you're famous for being famous,

why not make a whole game about trying to become famous?

Glu Mobile, they were this small tech company

based in Silicon Valley, they made these kind of

mobile games that were free to play and then had

in-app purchases, and they had this idea to turbocharge

a game that they already saw was having traction.

They quickly realised that the kind of main motivation

of fans was to become famous,

and that's exactly what Kim Kardashian symbolises.

"Kim Kardashian Hollywood" launched in 2014.

In about two years, it was downloaded 45 million times

and Forbes estimated that Kim took home

about $45 million in that same timeframe.

Having fully realised the power

of their following, the Kardashians were about to take

the value of celebrity to a level never seen before.

Kim started to realise like, huh, I can really monetize

my fan base, but the person who I think really realised that

even better than Kim was Kylie.

So help me God.

So help me God.

You can look at the presidency of a guy like Obama

as being the old notion of celebrity, right?

He accomplished something.

He was famous for doing things.

You went to a guy like Trump, and Trump was,

I wouldn't say he was famous for being famous,

but let's remember a celebrity, a reality television show

is what cemented his fame outside of New York.

We here in New York, knew he was ridiculous.

We'd been covering him for 30 years, but because reality TV

made him into this kind of like strutting,

helicopter riding mogul, people out there,

you know, believed it.

Why, because we told them that's what it was,

and he's been riding on that ever since.

People realised that just because you've been on

a reality show, that doesn't mean that you can't be

President of the United States and I think that

certainly had some knock on effect in making people

take Kim Kardashian more seriously.

If a reality star from the apprentice can end up

in the White House,

Kim Kardashian can be a businesswoman.

Instagram was the, let's call it

the bank for the Kardashians.

They had all of their training ground on Twitter.

All of a sudden now you've gone from literally

120 characters on Twitter to showing

your lifestyle, showing glam.

What they did is, they fed the beast of Instagram

and what did they do?

They generated so many followers, so many followers, and it,

and at that time they built an ecosystem of the Kardashians

that it doesn't matter what I sell,

my fan base, they're gonna buy it.

I think the Kardashians were such a hit on Instagram,

is because they're oversharers.

They need to share parts of their lives.

Their lives are for public consumption.

So on Instagram, they can do all that in real time.

They don't have to push you to their website

or get you to click here.

It's right there all in one app.

You can see Kim in a bikini.

You can see, you know, anything you need to see

they can show you in real time, and not many celebrities

do stuff like that.

At the time we were sending offers for Kim,

$1 million, one post.

$1 million, brands are willing to pay, why?

Because when they push out a message on their social media,

guaranteed sell out, guaranteed to create a trend,

it's the best million dollars you're spending.

Even me, I have 1.6 million followers

and I know one post I can make like $25,000.

Like, it's just an insane amount of money for

the least amount of work, but that's just

how the world works today.

Like, that's the power of the Kardashians' reach

and their engagement.

It's that valuable.

Kim Kardashian was the cash cow, right.

I got no offers for Kylie Jenner, none, zero.

I would offer brands, why don't you take Kylie,

let's bring Kylie with Kim.

Every brand couldn't even spot

the sparkle in Kylie Jenner, nobody.

And then Bruce and I together

have Kendall and Kylie Jenner.

The youngest of the sisters,

Kylie was just 10 years old

when "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" started airing.

Look what I can do?

Oh my.

In this contentious clip,

Kylie shocked some viewers who felt

she appeared over sexualized.

Let me see that.

I can't imagine being on national television,

having the world see you through those awkward kid phases.

No one's really supposed to be able

to see that part of your life.

One day, Kylie was the awkward little girl,

and the next day it was very obvious

that she had some things done.

Kylie denied it for the longest,

and how she would say she got her, the fullness look

is she would overline her lips.

Finally she tells people, actually I got my lips done.

Kylie was the sleeper cell

when it came to the Kardashians.

She was just the little sister, and then,

she now was hitting the younger demographic of young girls

who wanted to get dressed up and put makeup on,

and I remember the fascination with her body.

The obsession with Kylie Jenner's lips was so profound,

that teenagers were even doing like the Kylie Jenner

lip challenge, which is where you got a shot glass

and kind of like, inhaled on it in some way to sort of

like, artificially plump your lips.

Big lips, oh my goodness doctors are saying don't do that.

More than 400,000 tweets about this in the last week

and you're also Facebooking it.

While the public were mocking Kylie's looks,

plans were unfolding in the Kardashian camp

to turn this to their advantage.

What better business to start than lipstick

if the whole world is obsessed with your lips.

Kylie's uncurated Snapchat posts

gave her growing army of followers

a glimpse of her carefree lifestyle.

She posted a few kind of cryptic snaps of like,

oh, working on something new, that kind of thing,

and then November 2015, she launched

these three Kylie Lip Kits.

I just posted on Twitter.

Go get it, honey.

That's a clip where Kylie, it's the day of the launch

and she's kind of on her website looking at

the Shopify counter that shows how many people

were live on the store right then.

It's just so.

The emotional reaction shows

how genuinely overwhelmed they were by its success.

And they all sold out instantly.

Kylie, I think you've just launched an empire.

Kylie was quickly following

in her older sister's footsteps.

Aged just 21, Kylie's rapidly growing cosmetics enterprise

drew the attention of America's top business magazine.

Don't film the trash in my car.

All of a sudden, there's this direct to consumer brand

that's doing $330 million in sales without

barely any overhead, and a huge profit margin.

Like, this is amazing.

"Forbes" asked for documentation,

something that you can see and know

that this isn't bullshit, this is actually legitimate.

In 2017, I had a meeting with Kris Jenner in Calabasas,

and they were telling me that the full year figures for 2016

was something like $307 million in revenue

for Kylie Cosmetics, and that was just out of this world

unbelievable, and I saw a copy of her tax returns

for the year that showed those figures,

and the tax returns all looked very legit.

Kylie was forecast to become a billionaire,

a nice scoop for "Forbes" magazine

and a PR jackpot for the Kardashians.

My impression of Kris is that

she is incredibly smart and incredibly shrewd.

If you're building a business and you're seeking investment

or seeking to say, sell a stake of your business,

one of the greatest ways to raise your profile and do that

is with a great splashy article in "Forbes" magazine,

and a great cover.

This is the Kylie Jenner cover, spine date is August 2018,

and it calls her the $900 million cosmetics queen.

The 60 Richest Self-made Women.

Immediately it got a lot of backlash.

Was she grinding and did she like, come from the hood

and have to scrape together her pennies?

No, not really but she still had

to come up with this concept.

Whether it's self made or not, there is an element of like,

wow, that's a pretty incredible thing you did

at such a young age.

Whether or not Kylie was self-made

soon became overshadowed by the accusation

she had lied about her profits.

In November 2019, it was announced that Coty,

one of the biggest kind of makeup brands out there,

was going to acquire a majority stake in Kylie Cosmetics,

in a deal that valued the company at $1.2 billion,

but some of the figures from Kylie Cosmetics

started to become public, and that proved

to be a little problem.

"Forbes" published a story alleging that Kylie had lied,

and that the numbers on her tax return didn't match up

to the numbers that Coty had reported.

They called her the youngest self-made billionaire

to make the "Forbes" list, and now "Forbes" is accusing

Kylie Jenner of lying about her net worth

and forging tax returns.

"Forbes" claims her company, that would be Kylie Cosmetics,

is much smaller and less profitable than Jenner let on to.

It's worth noting that the Kardashians

explicitly deny ever forging any tax return.

"The accusations that the Jenners and/or their accountants

"falsified tax returns and then lied about

"their 2016 revenues for the last four years

"are absolutely false,"

the letter read.

Um, so they flatly denied that.

The Kardashians were never charged

with forging tax returns,

and the lip kits continued to sell.

Kylie's net worth has since been estimated to be far lower

than first thought, a mere 600 million dollars.

There's an old adage in PR and entertainment.

I don't care what you write about me,

just spell my name right.

That's kind of what the Kardashians are about.

Kylie and Kendall, they're millionaires.

No, they're not, they're billionaires.

No, they're not, they're making all this information up,

and then you have legitimate business magazines

writing stories about how they're piping

all this information about whether they're billionaires.

It's like, you don't understand.

You've already bought the notion.

They won, that's exactly what they want.

Just mention their name.

The Kardashians learnt and mastered the ability

how to become rich when you're famous without being

in a movie or a music career that every other

traditional actor or an artist has to do.

Now, do you think Brad Pitt was happy?

You think Angelina Jolie was happy?

Of course it created beef, but everyone else then

had to realise we have to embrace social media.

What changed is because of the internet, there were people

rising and becoming more important

because of their following on social media.

So that was really the perfect moment

for the Kardashians to rise to the top.

Kanye.

I'm Mickey Boardman from "Paper Magazine" and together

with Kim Kardashian, we broke the internet in 2014.

The name Break the Internet came about by accident actually.

Drew Elliott, who was the Creative Director of "Paper"

at the time, was coming back and giving a whole new redesign

to "Paper" to sort of take it into the future

and Drew said to me,

"if we have Kim Kardashian on the cover,

it will break the internet,"

and I said, "break the internet?

That's such a crazy name."

So I said "well yeah, let's do a whole issue called

'Break the Internet' and just be open about

what we're trying to do instead of pretending

we're putting someone on who we think is cool.

Let's show that we want to really get amazing traffic

and make people go crazy."

We knew that we wanted John-Paul Goude to do the cover.

So we just reached out to him and said we want to do Kim,

what would you like to do?

We didn't, it was absolutely his idea.

She came around the corner to the studio

on the outskirts of Paris, like Princess Diana

chased by paparazzi on motorcycles.

There were a million fans outside the studio.

I don't, I didn't tell, I don't know how people knew

she was going to be there, and she came and she just said,

"you know, I'm so excited about this.

I'm, whatever you want to do, I'm happy to do.

Let's, I'll stay all night.

Let's really, if we're going to do this,

let's really do it."

There were no problems.

There were no arguments.

One of the few times in 30 years of shooting celebrities

that it was literally a dream.

John-Paul had the idea to sort of do

a little strip tease with the dress.

He said, "well, what if we sort of do like

you're sort of peeling back the dress a little bit?"

And she said, "sure, let's do it."

We posted the "Break the Internet" cover at about seven p.m.

Eastern time in the "Paper" offices,

which were here in New York City.

In those times for us, you could measure how many people

were on your website, and for us,

a few hundred people was a good moment.

We would think, oh, look, we have 300 people on our site

right at the same time.

It's, that's really good.

Quickly, not immediately, but sort of like

by the next morning, we had 70,000 people

on our site all day long, like I mean for days and weeks.

There was very mixed reactions inside the TMZ newsroom.

Some people kind of got the joking sense of it.

Other people were like, what the hell is happening?

Why, why do people care?

And I think that was a real turning moment

for Kim and fashion, and I think that the love hate

of that magazine fueled just more curiosity.

Kim, do you regret doing that spread?

You being a mother,

do you hear about the criticism?

Kim, are you happy

with your picture of your butt?

For starters, people were really surprised to see Kim

do that sexy of a photoshoot, and I think people

were surprised by that because it felt like she was trying

to distance herself from how we met her in the first place.

She was trying to distance herself from the sex tape,

she was trying to distance herself even,

probably from "Playboy" magazine, but instead she does

this high fashion, full nude, nothing left

to the imagination photoshoot,

and people had a lot to say about that,

and then you add in, it was like a duplication

of a photoshoot that a black model did as well

and people thought that that was culturally appropriating.

The opening of the champagne was an old photo

that John-Paul Goude had done in the '70s

with a model named Carolina Beaumont.

Cultural appropriation is wrong and we weren't intending

to do it and if it insulted people I apologise and um,

yeah so I mean it's, those conversations do need to be had.

I certainly recognise that.

It broke the internet, but probably not for the reasons

that they thought it was going to break the internet.

Kim, big smile.

Kim, Kim, right here please.

Kim, Kim right over here please.

I started doing a lot of work primarily

in African-American publications, and I think that

the African-American community definitely felt

a certain kind of way of the Kardashian success,

because by and large, I think the through line is that

they felt that the success that this family was getting,

was off of the backs of black women.

You know, black women have had plump lips and big butts

and curvy bodies and darker skin since eternity.

In the old days, when things happened,

they happened and you wrote about them.

You never then wrote about what people

said about what you wrote about.

That never happened, but now, a fundamental beat

in every story is the social media outrage to the story.

So Kendall did an ad for Pepsi, and it was

this ghastly faux protest march.

Came on the heels of the George Floyd death

and the subsequent marches about that, and it was trying

to appropriate you know, the zeitgeist at the time,

and social protest, and it was a total clanger.

I mean, it was just awful.

Pepsi did apologise,

but not before it made world news.

I remember getting called on an American morning talk show

to talk about this, and again, you could say,

this is victory for the Kardashians.

I'm on a show where I'm tut-tutting what a terrible idea

it was for Pepsi to have done this ad with Kendall.

Did Kendall suffer any lasting consequences?

Well maybe by lunchtime, they were done,

but because there was a Kardashian,

it was worthy of some kind of commentary.

For me, the braids were the tipping point.

It was a blatant like, this is clearly a black girl look

that you've co-opted and then when she called them

Bo Derek braids it was like, Oh Jesus.

Um, she later came back and corrected herself and was like,

I understand why everyone's upset because I called it

Bo Derek braids but that was when I was like okay,

this is a little more than just

dating black men or tanning your skin.

They're Armenian and very strong

and proud in that identity.

So while Kim sort of did apologise for the accusations

of kind of almost blackface, blackfishing,

they haven't apologised for various instances,

wearing cornrows, like different traditionally

black hairstyles that they've sported.

Like, Kim has black kids and was married to Kanye for years.

I think they just have a very

complicated relationship to race.

Their father Robert Kardashian

is from Inglewood, California.

Inglewood, California is predominantly

black area in Los Angeles.

For the Kardashian kids, their uncles, you know,

their play uncles, we have play uncles, in the state,

their play uncles were all black men, and so they grew up

always adjacent to black culture and black community.

It wasn't that they woke up one day and said,

oh, you know what?

Hip hop is cool, and it's cool to be black.

So dammit, we're all going to, you know, try and present

as black women in a way and that's going

to be our road to fame.

I don't think that that's actually what happened.

I think as they became famous, they took that embrace

of that culture, and made a lot of money off of it.

One of the things that's always going to go on

with anybody like the Kardashians, you're always looking

for them to trip up.

Right, you're always waiting so there's always

going to be that tension.

It's always there, it's always just kind of

maybe a tiny flesh wound, right, or just a little pinprick,

but people are always waiting for it to take them down.

Go, go, go, go.

Watch your step.

But we really don't want to get them either, right?

We might want to trip them up a little bit but we don't want

to fully take them down because then what?

What happens if that happens?

Then who are we going to pay attention to?

In 2016 the family headed off

to Paris fashion week.

Kim posted live updates on Snapchat

revealing their glamorous locations and outfits.

Going to Givenchy with Kourtney.

I think everyone's learnt now.

I know we post in real time, I know we're obsessed

with social media, we wanna feed our fans everything,

but there's also a negative side.

You're letting the world know, I'm rich, I'm famous,

here's my gold, here's my jewellery,

here's everything, and I'm here!

After dinner with sisters Kourtney and Kendall,

Kim decided to call it a night.

Shortly before 3 a.m., she was robbed at gunpoint.

Kim Kardashian has been attacked by masked,

armed men, inside this exclusive Paris address,

bound up before eight million pounds

of her jewellery was stolen.

They kept on saying the ring, the ring.

I was like, you know, what?

Like, it didn't compute to me for a minute and then

the guys goes, the ring and I had put it up by the side

of my bed, so I handed him my ring and then he grabs me

and I was wearing a robe.

Though some people assumed

it was another Kardashian publicity stunt,

Kim gave an emotional account

to the chat show host David Letterman.

And um, he grabbed me and pulled me towards him,

but I wasn't wearing anything underneath so I was like,

okay, this is like the time I'm gonna get raped,

like just deal like, it's, this, it's gonna happen.

Just prepare yourself.

Kim, Kim how you doing?

Kim are you, are you okay?

Kim.

Are you okay, Kim?

The events in Paris were played out once again

in a gloomily filmed and sombre episode

of the Kardashians reality show,

which included a clearly shaken looking Kanye.

Okay, yeah so we won't talk about it

in front of the kids.

It was interesting for it to be such a scary moment,

but it's even weirder and I do mean weird that you have

this reality show that has to document it.

So it's like reliving it all over again.

It just felt like the Paris robbery was definitely

affecting Kanye because he was already going through

his kind of own mental breakdown and that might have been

the thing that kind of pushed him over the edge.

You all might be thinking right now,

did he smoke some before he came out here?

The answer is yes, I rolled up a little something.

I knocked the edge off.

During the 2015 VMAs,

a pumped up Kanye accepted an award,

then made an unexpected announcement.

I have decided in 2020 to run for President.

It's the same thing.

We are trapped in a loop.

Kanye's reputation for erratic appearances

reached a climax during his presidential campaign.

The statement is, in the bible it says

"thou shall not kill."

I can remember. - I thought that the whole

Kanye running for President thing was a joke.

I didn't realise that he was serious about this.

My dad wanted to abort me.

My mom saved my life.

There would have been no Kanye West

because my dad was too busy.

Once he started going out on a campaign trail,

he opened up and talked about his stance on abortion

and that he and Kim at one point, you know,

I guess had had a conversation about that

when they discovered that she was pregnant.

I almost killed my daughter.

I'm going to guess that Kim probably did not love Kanye

sharing something like that with a public audience.

I think that musicians, in particular ones that we classify

as geniuses, there often is something that

they're dealing with that probably makes them

a musical genius in a way that, you know,

it would end a lot of other people.

When the relationship was really starting

to crumble and dissolve, it made me think that

maybe there has always been something that's been

challenging for him with regards to mental wellness.

Hey Kim.

Are, are you really upset at Kanye?

Is he really embarrassing you?

In February 2021 Kim filed for divorce

and an ongoing feud has since played out on social media.

At one point, Kanye accuses the Kardashians of attempting

to take control of his assets,

with a legal order known as a 51-50.

If the Kardashian family wanted to put Kanye

under a 51-50, that is huge because, you know,

we're now really seeing the effects of what

being under that did for Britney Spears.

You know, she had no control over her assets,

no control over day to day decisions,

no control over her body, like, no control period.

Kanye, Kanye, Kanye, Kanye, Kanye.

Kim tried to navigate through the drama.

I have a husband who clearly is mentally ill,

and I'm trying to figure this out, and at a certain point,

the show takes a backseat to the health of my family

and the health of my kids, which I think

is what led to the divorce.

Yes, all of that was a drama, and yes, we all paid attention

to it breathlessly but I think she managed to kind of

navigate that as a celebrity, but also someone fundamentally

who also was a mother taking care of her kids

and needed to find a way out.

While her marriage to Kanye unravelled,

Kim kept herself busy with new ventures.

Soon she'll be one of the most successful lawyers,

I hate to tell all my lawyers back there.

Kim Kardashian West.

In recent years, it's been widely publicised

that Kim has been studying to become a lawyer.

Um, it really is such an honour to be here.

First time offender Alice-Marie Johnson

was 20 years into a life sentence for

a non-violent drug offence until Kim persuaded

President Trump to pardon her.

I just wanna thank all of the organisations that are,

you know, partnering with everything that's going on

and really being supportive, 'cause it really does mean

a lot to so many people that I've had

the pleasure to speak to.

I think it's two things at once.

You know, I think it's a real genuine interest

that she has in trying to like, understand the law

and understand how people got there in the first place,

or you can look at it cynically and be like, ah, it's PR,

like, it's just her trying to do some good work to make up

for all of this, these allegations of appropriation

over the years, and, you know,

maybe the truth is somewhere in between.

So thank you.

While still working towards becoming

a qualified lawyer, Kim and family signed a deal

with Disney, worth over $100 million.

An explosive title sequence punctuated the arrival

in April 2022 of their glossy revamped reality show.

You say so.

I think I want regular fries.

It had the same banality as always.

I'll have regular fries too.

I'll have just a little more fries, yeah.

Thank you.

And incredibly a key narrative revolved

around the same topic as the family's first ever show.

About that and then my lawyer calls about the threats

that there's more footage from the sex tape

that's been out there.

Our legal rights are that she could sue.

Let me see you shake that thing for 23.

Shake that thing for 23.

The low quality tape made in 2003

starred Kim and R&B singer Ray-J,

performing various sexual acts while on holiday in Mexico.

I'm a mother fuckin' perp man, catch me on.

Wait, tell me what I look like.

The sex tape had been good for

the original TV show's ratings and the Kardashians appeared

to believe it could be a blessing once again.

Didn't we deal with this in

the first season of "Keeping Up?"

This is a good omen you guys.

What's a good omen?

Talking about your sex tape in the first season.

I feel like we're back to day one!

Viewers may have been pulled in,

but it also reignited the uncomfortable question

over who engineered the tape's initial publication.

Over the years, there was a lot of rumours going around

of who was truly behind the Kim Kardashian sex tape.

Was it Ray-J, was it Kim, was it Paris?

Was it Kris Jenner, just to put

her daughter's name out there?

In this cunningly produced skit

from James Corden's chat show, Kris attempts to shake off

the rumours with the help of a lie detector.

Did you help Kim release her sex tape?

It's okay.

No, no.

True.

Of course it's true!

Of course it's true!

When we was young, y'all manipulated us to do the shit.

I take full responsibility for that act, I was lit.

We made a fucking lot of money, I get it.

Kris's denial prompted this

highly charged social media response from Kim's ex, Ray-J,

claiming she was very much involved.

Her momma made us go shoot it for safety.

She watched the motherfucker and said,

"hey, we're gonna go with the first one

because the first one is better.

It gives my daughter a better look."

The Kardashians continue to deny

their complicity to this day.

You don't come from a place of being

Paris Hilton's assistant to a billionaire

unless you have a master negotiator.

So whatever happened with the sex tape, I'm sure Kris Jenner

handled it correctly, and got the maximum dollar.

While navigating the storms of controversy,

the Kardashians continue to expand their influence.

The combined Kardashian-Jenner net worth is approaching

$3 billion, with a pathway being laid

for the next generation.

I won't say groomed but I think Kris might have,

keeps her eye on them, and it's like,

who'll be next to kind of carry the torch?

Nine year old North is rapidly following

in mom Kim's footsteps.

Posts like this playful montage of a hair and beauty demo

has helped her amass over 10 million followers on TikTok.

For a family that that is so famous on social media,

it's like not surprising to see North taking it

to the newest coolest platform.

Like a weird American royal family there are princes

and princelings that are going to become rising up

and you know, suddenly we're going to be reading about

one of the grandkids and the empire will continue.

I think for about 19 years, we've been thinking

we've reached peak Kardashian

and we keep reaching new peaks.

So every peak is a new peak.

I would not say that the Kardashians

are a Hollywood dream story.

The Kardashians have created something wildly different.

It remains to be seen how that changes the landscape

of everything that we know to be true

about celebrity and excessive wealth.

I can tell you one thing, having been

very close with the Kardashians.

If you think you've had enough with them

on the physical world, they're about to dominate

the metaverse and Web3 like you have no idea.