CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

During all those years on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Bruce never really emerged as his own fully formed character, even though Kris had initially used his fame to pitch the show. Rather, he always came across as the mild-mannered, henpecked husband and father. Publicly, Kris liked to sing his praises.

”The best part is how much the kids adore Bruce,” she told an interviewer. “He’s the best daddy in the world. We get up at 5:30 and that’s my only time to myself, when I can go to the gym. That’s my ice cream for the day, working out. Bruce does the car-pool, the breakfast, feeds the baby, changes the diapers. Then he takes off for forty-seven cities in four days, or whatever. Thank God for phones and faxes. If only somebody would invent fax sex, we’d be all set.”

But it never appeared that he was an important player either in the show or in the family, where Kris clearly dominated both personally and professionally. For the younger generation that made up the show’s target demographic, it would have been difficult to guess that Bruce was once a ubiquitous personality in his own right. When the New York Times reviewed the very first show in 2007, Ginia Bellafante wrote, “Acting as patriarch of the family now is Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic gold medalist whose emasculation would seem to begin with the absence of his name from the show’s title, even though he is the only person in his household to have actually accomplished anything. Mr. Jenner seems to function now more or less as a domestic and weak-willed disciplinarian.”

For all that time, people assumed that Bruce was okay with the way he came across. Now the world learned from Caitlyn that he had resented his treatment and found Kris controlling and manipulative. It appeared to confirm people’s worst suspicions about the matriarch. It also appeared to coincide with a noticeable decline in the Kardashian brand. The first signs came when Sears announced that it was dropping the Kardashian Kollection of clothes and accessories, which had been a staple at the retail chain for years and had once sold as much as $600 million in a single year. Sales had been plummeting, and the retailer had been forced to deeply discount many of the family’s line of affordable low-end merchandise. A $59 lace crop top, for example, was being offered for $9.99 on the company’s website only two weeks after the Diane Sawyer interview.

Although Kim’s personal brand appeared to remain strong, with a slew of endorsements and an ever-increasing presence on social media, a controversy in 2015 provided a telling insight into just how she and her family still used social media for questionable financial gain. When Kim became pregnant with her second child, America soon learned that she was enduring terrible morning sickness. It was hard to escape the news as she shared her agony on Facebook, Twitter, and her hugely popular blog. Imagine her relief when she appeared to discover a drug, Diclegis, that could relieve the awful symptoms.

“OMG,” she wrote. “Have you heard about this? As you know my #morningsickness has been pretty bad. I tried changing things about my lifestyle, like my diet, but nothing helped, so I talked to my doctor. He prescribed me #Diclegis, I felt a lot better and most importantly, it’s been studied and there are no increased risk to the baby. I’m so excited and happy with my results that I’m partnering with Duchesnay USA to raise awareness about treating morning sickness. If you have morning sickness, be safe and sure to ask your doctor about the pill with the pregnant woman on it and find out more.”

But as Kim reaped untold sums from posts like these, it appeared that she might have been unwittingly jeopardizing the health of her followers. In August 2015, the US Food and Drug Administration slammed the company with which Kim had contracted to hawk the drug and singled out her paid postings in particular. “The social media post is false or misleading,” it warned Duchesnay, “in that it presents efficacy claims for Diclegis, but fails to communicate any risk information associated with its use and it omits material facts. Thus, the social media post misbrands Diclegis within the meaning of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and makes its distribution violative.” Stories like these only reinforced the idea that the Kardashians had become corporate shills—an image that Kim had been working hard to shed since she married Kanye.

Keeping Up with the Kardashians ratings for season 10 had also plummeted, with the series dropping viewers in droves. The premiere of season 10 had drawn only 2.54 million viewers, beaten by another reality show in its time slot, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, which was watched by 3.2 million Americans.

Only a few months earlier, Kris had negotiated an incredible $100 million deal with E! to renew the series for four more seasons. Now the network must have been wondering if they had thrown good money after bad. Meanwhile, Caitlyn had announced that she would be participating in a new reality series of her own that would be known as I Am Cait, following her new life as a woman. It was widely reported that she had demanded and received the same lucrative $100 million deal that Kris had won to renew Keeping Up with the Kardashians. When the new show premiered in July 2015, its debut episode drew a healthy 4.7 million viewers over three showings. On that first episode, Kim appears and again shows public support for her stepfather but also delivers an ominous warning, apparently referring to Caitlyn’s comments about Kris in Vanity Fair. “You look amazing; it’s your time,” Kim tells her. “But you don’t have to bash us on your way up.”

It appeared that while Caitlyn was indeed on her way up, the Kardashians might have been heading in the opposite direction. Or at least that’s what the family feared. And it soon emerged that while Bruce Jenner had seethed with resentment all those years as he watched Kris control his life, he had also learned a thing or two from her savvy business techniques.

With considerable fanfare in June 2015, it was announced that Caitlyn had been chosen to receive the ESPY Arthur Ashe Courage Award, presented every year to an individual who “transcends sports.” And although her initial coming out was widely praised in the sports world, there was now a significant backlash surrounding the news that Caitlyn Jenner was being presented with the award instead of “more worthy” candidates such as Lauren Hill, who had received widespread coverage playing college basketball for months despite suffering from terminal brain cancer that resulted in her death two months earlier.

Broadcaster Bob Costas called the decision to give Caitlyn the award a “crass exploitation play.” Friday Night Lights producer Peter Berg posted a photo on Instagram of the amputee war veteran Gregory Gadson, who had been featured in Berg’s 2012 film Battleship. Beside it was a photo of Caitlyn. The caption read, “One Man traded 2 legs for the freedom of the other to trade 2 balls for 2 boobs. Guess which Man made the cover of Vanity Fair, was praised for his courage by President Obama and is to be honored with the ‘Arthur Ashe Courage Award’ by ESPN?”

Responding to the criticism, the network immediately defended its decision to give Caitlyn the award. “I think Caitlyn’s decision to publicly come out as a transgender woman and live as Caitlyn Jenner displayed enormous courage and self-acceptance,” ESPY executive producer Maura Mandt told Sports Illustrated. ”Bruce Jenner could have easily gone off into the sunset as this American hero and never have dealt with this publicly. Doing so took enormous courage. He was one of the greatest athletes of our time.”

But it soon emerged that there was more to the decision. Behind the scenes, Caitlyn and her people had allegedly pulled off a ploy right out of the Kris Jenner playbook. Radar Online reported that the idea to present Caitlyn with the award originated from her own camp, which pitched the idea to the sports network in exchange for public relation plugs on her upcoming reality series.

“It was a brilliant move because the executives at ESPN loved the idea, and immediately began making sure it got done. Caitlyn’s journey to accepting the award will also be featured on her upcoming reality show, I Am Cait,” a source told the site. “There was a hiccup during the talks about Caitlyn receiving the award, and her reps were prepared to pull her interview with Diane Sawyer if she didn’t get it. It was ironed out and ABC [the parent company of ESPN] owns one of the biggest stories of the year.”

Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian appears to have gone out of her way to distance herself from the family brand as she forges a separate identity largely tied to her marriage with Kanye rather than as a reality-TV star. This would seem to leave her sisters and former business partners out in the cold, as they had long feared, watching her ascendancy. In April 2015, the couple achieved a significant coup in their joint quest to be taken seriously in the world of fashion when they appeared on the cover of the world’s most prestigious fashion Bible, Vogue, photographed by the same photographer who had shot Caitlyn for Vanity Fair.

As yet another indication that she is consciously trying to shed her widely caricatured reality-TV image, it was announced that Kim would deliver a lecture on the “Objectification of Women in the Media”—no small irony from the woman who only a few months earlier had posed for full frontal nude photos in the edgy lifestyle magazine Paper. To her credit, Kim had long associated herself with serious causes, especially her crusade to have the 1915 Turkish massacre of Armenians recognized as genocide. She had even volunteered to act as a UN ambassador like her purported role model, Angelina Jolie, but that sounds as much like a PR ploy designed to burnish her image as a realistic idea. After all, Jolie had successfully transformed herself from a widely disdained junkie bisexual into her present-day incarnation as “Saint Angelina” through a shrewd image reinvention worthy of Kris Jenner. But Jolie was also an Oscar-winning actor and had some bona fides to work with before her transformation.

While Kim has never been known for her political astuteness—she urged her followers to support Barack Obama in the US midterm elections even though he wasn’t running for anything—she appears to be genuinely committed to using her influence for social change. She has also emerged as a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy and, in contrast to many of her mind-numbingly vapid peers, she hasn’t been afraid to call herself a “feminist.”

There have even been unconfirmed reports that Kim has been in discussions to extricate herself from the family brand and terminate her management agreement with Kris Jenner so that she can “move in a different direction.” This seems exceedingly unlikely, given their close bond and the fact that Kim could never hope to find somebody as capable and business savvy as Kris whom she can trust. More likely it is a rumor deliberately designed to distance her personal brand from Kris’s own tarnished reputation, at least until Kris concocts a way to make the public forget the story of the moment and once again pull the spotlight back onto her own family.

More credible are reports that Kris has been using alcohol to get over her apparent humiliation from Caitlyn’s public revelations and the fact that her ex has been hogging the spotlight that had once been reserved for Kardashians. Kris’s younger sister Karen Houghton had in fact implied as far back as the spring of 2014 that Kris was hitting the bottle heavily after her separation from Bruce.

“Pray for Kris Jenner she needs it . . . crazy. Shes a nutcase. She doesn’t need prayers she needs sky vodka hahaha hahaha hahaha,” Karen posted on Facebook in April 2014. Their father, Robert, was in fact an alcoholic whose death in Mexico years before was reportedly the result of drunk driving.

“Back in the day Kris was quite the party girl,” a Los Angeles hair stylist named Stella Fagan told me, recalling that she had styled Kris’s hair a number of times while she was still married to Robert. “Sometimes she reeked of alcohol when she came in to get her hair done. She was young, she was wild. Nothing like the all-American mom Kris Jenner we see on TV today.”

Even after she emerged in the public spotlight, issues with Kris’s drinking surfaced a number of times. In 2012, Kourtney Tweeted during a family vacation in the Dominican Republic after Kris fell into the pool. “I think my mom is definitely drunk already,” she posted. “She is just such a freak.” A year later, Khloé announced on video while attending a basketball game with Kris, “We’re at a Clipper game. My mom is fucking drunk; what’s new?” In 2013, Robert’s widow, Ellen Kardashian, told In Touch, “I know her partying and drinking was a big issue in their marriage. I thought she had a problem with alcohol because she would drink in such excess. He worried about the children.”

It’s difficult to determine from these comments whether Kris genuinely has a problem or if, like many people, she likes to tie one on from time to time. She has undoubtedly kept a lower profile in the months following Caitlyn’s unveiling, emerging occasionally to grant an interview. She seemed especially determined to counter Caitlyn’s charge that she had “controlled” Bruce throughout their marriage.

“I guess if I get a little weird about something that isn’t the way I want it, and I complain, then it’s called controlling,” she told the New York Times. “I like everything a certain way. I’m not somebody who can just lay back and let it happen. That’s never going to happen for me. And I think that’s what’s gotten me to where I am in life, at the same time. I can’t turn it on and off.”

In the summer of 2015, I spoke to a sixty-one-year-old Los Angeles fund-raiser who has known Kris since the ’80s. I wondered if she could share some insight about her current frame of mind and the truth of Caitlyn’s allegations.

“Everyone who goes to Kris’s house has to sign a confidentiality agreement,” she told me.

It’s very annoying. Not even the Queen of England is as controlling as Kris. I knew her years ago from her days with Robert Kardashian and still bump into her today. They were good friends of mine. They were not together a lot. Kris used to show up at functions often alone. She was wild back in the day, lived very carefree. There were rumors about her having extramarital affairs and lots of stories about how she liked to party. Robert once told me she scared him, and that he had never met a more domineering woman in his life. She lived very similarly to the way her daughters live today—always in the spotlight, always needing to have a man in her life. With Bruce, I truly believe they went their separate ways years ago. They would rarely be seen together in public, only on the TV show, which I believe a lot of it was staged for ratings. The one thing I remember is that whenever I saw them together, they never showed any affection to each other. They looked more like business partners than a couple who were in love. Kris wanted the Kardashians to be a modern-day version of the Brady Bunch when she met Bruce. Two families coming together, living as one big happy family. But it never really happened. The Kardashian kids and the Jenner kids never really were very close. It was obvious there was a rivalry between them. And I think that’s one of the main reasons why Kris and Bruce’s marriage didn’t last. Too much tension, too much rivalry between the kids. The Jenner kids weren’t pleased with how much attention Bruce gave Kris’s kids. It got on their nerves. They confronted Bruce numerous times about this, especially Brody Jenner, who was furious that Kris wouldn’t do anything to try to boost his music career. She had a lot of connections in music and could have done more to make Brody the star he wanted to be.

Kris’s personality has always been up and down. I’ve known her for decades and she has never been consistent. She always seems stressed out. I do give her credit, though; she works harder than anyone I know. She’s always been determined to make it big, and she was never shy to work for it. I can tell you for sure that without Kris, the Kardashians would never have made it remotely to where they are today. Kris is a shrewd woman, despite her dominating personality. The last time I saw her was a couple months ago at a restaurant. We talked for a few minutes. She was dining with that new alleged boyfriend of hers, Corey Gamble. She didn’t look happy at all. I was worried something was wrong with her. I gave her a hug but didn’t want to ask her what’s wrong because her boyfriend was right there. I think despite all the fame and fortune, Kris is more sad and lonely than she lets on. The Kris I saw that night was not the Kris of old, who would light up a room when entering and would be the person everyone thought didn’t have a care in her life.

And yet some things never change. When Khloé’s ex Lamar Odom was found unconscious in a Nevada brothel in October 2015, the obvious conclusion was that he had been indulging in more than just the pleasures of the flesh. Considering his long-standing problems with drugs—which derailed both his NBA career and his marriage to Khloé—it didn’t take much imagination to speculate what may have caused the troubled Odom to lapse into the coma that kept him unconscious for four days before he finally woke and was taken off life support. Indeed, People magazine eventually reported that he had cocaine and opiates in his system when he was brought into a Vegas hospital. But during the interval when the cause of Odom’s condition remained a mystery, TMZ carried an “exclusive” report about what had caused the thirty-five-year-old to go “off the rails.” According to “sources,” Odom had been having a perfectly normal time at the Love Ranch until an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians aired on Sunday night in which he was featured. In the episode, Khloé recived a call from Lamar informing her that his best friend, Jamie Sangouthai, had died of an apparent heroin OD. In another scene, Khloé was seen fleeing a nightclub after she heard Lamar was on his way in. “My heart dropped to my stomach” at the news, Khloé informed the cameras. TMZ reported that before the episode, Lamar was “chill” and there was no evidence he had been high on drugs or alcohol. Afterward, he was “irate” and “inconsolable.” The leaks were not confined to TMZ. Even People participated. “It’s hard for Khloé. He is on his last leg,” a family friend told the magazine. For their part, the Kardashians wasted no time letting it be known that they “dropped everything” when they heard of Lamar’s state. Kim even cancelled a baby shower she had planned.

Radar quoted a source describing the arrival of family members who came to visit while Lamar was still unconscious. “It’s a shit show,” the source said. “The Kardashians are trying to run everything. They walked into the hospital with cameras rolling. It was shocking, but hardly a surprise. . . . They are all crying and pretending like they care.”

The family denied the report but the brothel owner, Dennis Hof, let it be known that he had been contacted by Khloé’s publicist ordering him to stop talking to the media about Lamar. “That’s Khloé’s job,” he was informed. Hof was not impressed. “I told her to pass on a message,” he told CNN. “Go to hell.”

The Post ran a feature detailing the family’s questionable behavior during the ordeal. The headline spoke for itself, “How the Kardashians Exploit and Destroy for Reality Ratings.”

Would Kris Jenner really go so far as to exploit her daughter’s family tragedy for the sake of ratings? It’s telling that more than one media outlet was even asking the question.

Even if the Kardashian brand is irreparably shattered, Kris still has an ace in the hole. Since the launch of the series in 2007, her daughters Kylie and Kendall have grown up in front of the camera, evolving from cute children into gorgeous teenagers before the viewers’ eyes. In the process, they have embraced the family business in impressive fashion. In 2013, the sisters launched the Kendall and Kylie Collection with the youth-oriented clothing brand PacSun. Soon after, they launched their own jewelry line, followed by a shoe and handbag line and another clothing line with the British retailer TopShop. They also have separate product lines under their own names. Together, they have earned millions of dollars and are already far more successful than their older sisters, Khloé and Kourtney. Both have been modeling since they were young teenagers, and Kendall has emerged as a full-fledged supermodel, fronting campaigns for Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld and appearing on the covers of countless fashion magazines. It’s widely predicted, in fact, that Kendall will eclipse even her sister Kim before long.

Meanwhile, like Kim, Kylie has been romantically involved with a world class hip-hop artist, Tyga, who publicly declared his love for the seventeen-year-old in the summer of 2015, even though Kylie denied at the time that they were dating. For her eighteenth birthday, Tyga, twenty-five, bought Kylie a luxury red Mercedes SUV. And, like her parents, Kylie appears to be a fan of facial augmentation, having developed a set of lips and a “resulting pout” nearly as distinctive as Kim’s posterior. After denying for months that she had her lips enhanced, she finally came clean on an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, on which she and her sister have emerged as the new stars and will undoubtedly help to keep up the ratings in the three years left on their E! contract. “I have temporary lip fillers,” she confessed on the show. “It’s just an insecurity of mine and it’s what I wanted to do. I’m just not ready to talk to reporters about my lips yet because everyone always picks us apart. I want to admit to the lips, but people are so quick to judge me on everything. So I might have tiptoed around the truth, but I didn’t lie.”

Manufactured controversies and the girls’ modeling careers have shifted them into the spotlight at a very convenient time. And while Kris may have been keeping a lower profile since Caitlyn’s emergence, she is working as hard as ever behind the scenes to manage her youngest daughters’ burgeoning careers and, of course, collecting her 10 percent. It may just help that Kendall and Kylie have a last name that is not Kardashian but one that aligns them with the hottest story of the year. It would surprise no one, in fact, if the name of the TV show is one day changed to Keeping Up with the Jenners.

Whatever the name of the show, the financially savvy matriarch seems to have predicted as far back as 2011 that the younger generation would be her secret weapon in prolonging her entertainment dynasty. In fact, she appears to have only one regret.

“My fantasy is to have Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Season 26. Who knew it would be this profitable? I should have had more kids.”