Kim Kardashian

by Sean Smith

  The singer had branched out into the world of reality television in a way that Kim hadn’t seen before. The great majority of reality shows seemed to be about putting real people – usually celebrities – into unreal situations. That was not the premise of Brandy: Special Delivery, which ran on MTV for four episodes in June and July 2002. Brandy was expecting her first child with her then husband and producer Robert ‘Big Bert’ Smith – although he later revealed they were never officially married. The show linked things that were going on during the pregnancy with events in her professional life. She shops, she goes to parenting classes, she appears on TV, she discusses pregnancy with her mum, she is in the recording studio, she has an ultrasound of the baby, she enjoys a baby shower and she has a photography session. Ray J wasn’t forgotten, and appeared in a couple of episodes. After Brandy gave birth to a daughter, Sy’rai, there was nowhere for the series to go.

  For Kim Kardashian, it was an eye-opener. Here was someone she knew turning her life into entertainment. Throughout her career, Kim has done very little that could be described as original, but she is unsurpassed at absorbing influences and making sure she does it bigger and better.

  Kim was warmly accepted into Paris Hilton’s entourage when she was hired to sort out the dressing room and closet in her Spanish-style townhouse in North Kings Road, just below Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Kim had a growing reputation as the best person for this kind of job. Organising Paris’s wardrobe was quite a task, because it was so big. It was rather like refitting and restocking a boutique.

  Paris Hilton was a phenomenon. She was by no means the first person to be famous for being famous, but she maximised the celebrity of her name and turned it into a huge money-spinner for herself. Kim had known her first in preschool. When the two became friends again after Kim’s marriage split, she was able to watch and learn from a master.

  Superficially, at least, the two women couldn’t have been more different. The tall, willowy, blonde Paris Whitney Hilton was born into a level of American high society that was a division above the relatively new money of the Kardashians. The surname Hilton was one of the most famous in the US, mentioned in the same breath as Getty or Rockefeller. Her great-grandfather, Conrad Hilton, who founded the Hilton hotel chain, was married to Zsa Zsa Gabor; her great-uncle, Conrad ‘Nicky’ Hilton, Jr, was one of the husbands of Elizabeth Taylor.

  She is the eldest child of real-estate developer Richard Hilton and actress-socialite Kathy Richards. She was always introduced back then as the heir to a $360-million fortune, but, in fact, she was one of multiple heirs. She spent her childhood moving between the couple’s many five-star luxury homes, which included mansions in The Hamptons and Bel Air, as well as a suite in the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan. Her family was huge. She is the eldest of four children, with a younger sister and two brothers. She had 10 cousins on her mother’s side, and her father had seven siblings. Christmas, Halloween and Easter were big family events, with her father on hand to record everything lovingly on video – just as in the Kardashian household.

  Paris began modelling as a child and was given the nickname ‘Star’ by her mother. In 2000, while Kim was settling down to domestic life as a married woman, Paris signed a contract with Trump Model Management in New York. Donald Trump is a friend of her father. She had already become a fixture in the gossip columns, thanks to a romance with Leonardo DiCaprio. The renowned ‘Page Six’ of the New York Post seemed to have a Paris story every day. A controversial feature in Vanity Fair, with eye-catching pictures by David LaChapelle of her in hot pants, with younger sister Nicky, enhanced the impression that everyone was talking about her. It was an early example for Kim of how a photograph was the most effective way of obtaining publicity.

  The voracious daily coverage of the glamorous life of Paris Hilton was an example of how publicity, both good and bad, would lead to more publicity and thereby increase one’s fame. In many ways, it was a template for turning oneself into a brand that Kim would have been foolish not to try to emulate, Paris was so successful at it.

  In 2003, she signed with the Fox television network to star in a new reality show with her sister Nicky called The Simple Life. The idea was to inject humour into the reality television genre by taking the two socialites out of their comfort zone of designer dresses and credit cards and putting them to work on a farm in Arkansas, a state in the Deep South. Paris had, of course, never worked a day in her life. The idea was inspired by an old sixties sitcom called Green Acres, which starred Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor.

  The head of casting at Fox, Sharon Klein, explained, ‘They wanted to see stilettos in shit.’ Sharon was impressed with Paris, whom she found funny, genuine and not at all stupid: ‘She was in her own reality and not embarrassed to talk about it. There was a sweetness about her.’

  The show was scheduled to begin in December 2003. On 5 November, the ‘Page Six’ column revealed that there was an explicit sex tape involving Paris in circulation. She had made it in May 2001 with her then boyfriend Rick Salomon. He, apparently, was in the habit of filming himself having sex with his girlfriends, and Paris was no exception. This one wasn’t going to win any Oscars, although it was shot in a realistic, grainy black-and-white mode, or night vision.

  Salomon, it transpired, was a handsome character, who made his living as a professional poker player after giving up a career as a teenage drug dealer. He admitted, ‘In my teens, I dealt in drugs big time.’ After Paris, he married Shannen Doherty, one of the stars of Beverly Hills, 90210. They had apparently been dating for just two days before becoming husband and wife. The marriage was annulled after nine months, and Shannen reflected, ‘I haven’t made the best choices in men.’ He also enjoyed hot-tub parties with Pamela Anderson, whom he married in 2007 and again in 2014. Salomon is one of the bad boys women love.

  There is no doubt that the video, though rampantly exhibitionist, was originally made for personal consumption. The dialogue, such as it is, was too embarrassing to have been planned. Paris told Rick to say he loved her and wanted to kiss her; he just wanted to take off her pants.

  Salomon offered the tape for sale on his personal website for $50 a time and then negotiated a distribution deal with Red Light District Video. He is said to have made millions from it. After many legal proceedings and lawsuits from both of them, Paris was reported to have settled for $400,000, plus a share of the profits, and to have given most of the money to charity. She had no further contact with him. He continued to prosper, however. When he played in the 2014 World Series of Poker, he won $2.8 million.

  Her then media consultant, the much-respected Elliot Mintz, observed that it was a terrible experience for Paris. ‘It’s something that will always be a footnote to her life. She was wounded and then took a deep breath and then moved forward. She did not allow it to stop her, which is saying more than most of us could say if a personal video tape that we recorded with somebody of that nature suddenly was available around the country. So nothing to be proud of, but the true measure of a woman or a man is how well they can adapt to something that occurs in their life and move forward, which I think she did with grace.’

  Paris handled the situation with good humour in public. Three days after the premiere of her reality show, she appeared on the fabled Saturday Night Live in a sketch of double entendres with the comedian and presenter Jimmy Fallon. He asked her, ‘Is the Paris Hilton roomy?’ She replied, ‘It might be for you, but most people find it very comfortable.’

  The press storm surrounding the sex tape was very welcome publicity for The Simple Life. Her sister Nicky had dropped out, apparently not relishing the prospect of the full glare of public attention, so her place was taken by Nicole Richie, the adopted daughter of Lionel Richie.

  The interesting aspect of The Simple Life as a reality show is that there was nothing real about it. Paris and Nicole were placed in a situation that they would never have come across in their lives. It was completely fabricated. It was, in effect, a si
tuation comedy with them playing themselves or, more precisely, a version of themselves. In these programmes, the participants are creating on-screen personas. Paris Hilton is a far more sophisticated woman than the clueless heroine of this series.

  She was certainly smart enough to understand that she could use its popularity to increase the profile of her brand as Paris Hilton. She signed a music contract with Warner Bros and started recording an album in 2004. She produced a bestselling book, Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose, which featured countless photographs of Paris fashions, recollections of childhood and helpful hints on how to behave.

  She appeared in acting roles in several popular television series, including The O.C., Veronica Mars and Las Vegas. She also made some forgettable films, such as The Hillz. The publicity poster for the film naturally featured Paris, as she was by far the most famous person in it. She even won an award for the horror movie House of Wax – the Teen Choice Award for best scream scene.

  She launched her own fragrance and line of jewellery, and was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal appearances. As an example of how to maximise a brand, Kim couldn’t have had a better one. Elliot Mintz observed, ‘There is no question that she was influenced by Paris. Her eyes were open, her ears were open, but that is a lot different from saying she made a conscious effort to imitate Paris. I don’t think there was an agenda. She observed the phenomena happening to Paris at the time.’ In the future, it would certainly be extraordinary how many aspects of the Kim Kardashian story would mirror the celebrity branding of Paris Hilton, whether consciously or unconsciously.

  Paris adopted Kim as her companion for nights out to the fashionable clubs of Los Angeles. Nobody knew who Kim was – she was just referred to by Paris as ‘my friend’ and that is how everyone regarded her. She even appeared fleetingly in The Simple Life.

  They have a boring conversation inside Paris’s closet about an outfit that she might wear to visit India – her ‘if-I-ever-go-to-India outfit’.

  Kim: You’re not allowed to show any of your hair.

  Paris: Are you allowed to have blonde hair? If you travel there, do you really have to do this?

  Kim: I think so or you’ll get shot.

  An urban myth grew up that Paris Hilton ordered Kim Kardashian to ‘clean out my closet’. Paris probably did ask Kim to clean out her closet at some point – after all, that was what she was originally paying her for – just not on film.

  Elliot met Kim in the closet one day when Paris was trying on clothes to decide what to wear. He saw Kim at the house frequently and then she started to go out with them in the evenings. The old school friends were clearly pals, but Kim was always careful to get in the car after Paris and enter buildings a step behind her.

  Elliot was very impressed by Kim, who was completely different to many of the entourage. ‘She was low maintenance and undemanding. She was gracious. She was extremely polite. She was somewhat reserved. She would never create an embarrassment. She was not a drinker or substance abuser. She never got into arguments or quarrels with other people.

  ‘She was also very punctual. If we were all going to some location at 10 p.m., then she would be at that spot at 10 p.m. If I told everyone that we were leaving in 10 minutes to avoid our car being followed by the press – perhaps at a service entrance – then Kim would be there 9 minutes and 50 seconds later.’

  It’s easy to understand why Kim was so well liked. She was the nice best friend in a movie, who was never going to embarrass the star – in this case, Paris Hilton. She wasn’t the person handing out business cards or collecting them. This was her first exposure to a bona fide celebrity world and all its accompanying madness. She didn’t reach into her handbag on evenings out, take out a Filofax and write notes.

  If you look at many of the things she later attempted, they were tried first by Paris, with varying degrees of success. Elliot maintained, ‘Paris is the mother of reality television. She created it.’ It would be fair to say that The Simple Life brought the reality genre into the mainstream. It ran for five series, three with Fox and then two with E! before it was cancelled in July 2007.

  The producer, Jonathan Murray, who would later be the man silently pulling the strings on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, wasn’t entirely happy about his former show. ‘With Paris and Nicole, we never reached the point where they would just trust us to shoot. It often felt like they were doing the light, fluffy story on our show, and then there would be this whole other story about them in the tabloids. For viewers, it began to feel like they got the truth from the tabloids rather than from the show.’ Reading between the lines, it would seem that Murray was looking for a show that the public thought was more genuine.

  11

  VIVID IMAGINATION

  With Smooch proving to be a success, Kourtney decided she wanted to expand and open another store – this time for grown-up women. She asked Khloé if she would like to be involved and her sister jumped at the opportunity. At first, they decided not to include Kim, who seemed busy with her own life and would have little time to help. Her work with Brandy and Paris was going well and she was trying to enhance her reputation as a personal stylist. She was also having her fair share of problems with Ray J.

  Kim was offended that her sisters didn’t appear to want her in their new venture and told them so. For the sake of family harmony, they invited her to join them. Her first priority, however, was making a name for herself. She opened a Myspace profile, using the sobriquet Princess Kimberly. She acquired 856 friends on the now outdated social networking site. Her mini bio read: ‘I’m a Princess and you’re not, so there.’ She listed ‘My Daddy’ as her hero. It was an early, if underdeveloped, recognition that social networking was a vital ingredient in self-promotion.

  Kourtney and Khloé basically ran the shop without her. When they found the premises around the corner from Smooch, they dragooned Bruce to do the shop-fitting and transform the place into the chic boutique they had in mind. They decided to call it DASH.

  All the girls helped with choosing stock, but it was Khloé who took on the day-to-day running of the store, while Kourtney continued to look after Smooch. Kim would bring her friends and those employing her as a stylist to DASH and encourage them to buy clothes. It was an astute move, because she earned something from both ends of the deal.

  Indirectly, the store led to her final breakup with Ray J. After nearly three years together, their relationship was going through a particularly rocky patch towards the end of 2005 and into 2006. Ray described what happened in a book called Death of the Cheating Man: What Every Woman Must Know About Men Who Stray, a collaboration with lifestyle guru Maxwell Billieon. Ray related how he suspected her of playing away, but was so caught up in his own straying that he didn’t care. He said there had been a breakdown in trust and she seemed to be checking up on him at every opportunity: ‘She literally thought I was cheating with every girl I ran across.’

  He complained that ‘KK’ – as he referred to her in the book – seemed to know every time a girl called for him or left a voicemail message. It later dawned on him that she must have been checking his phone. He confessed, ‘I used sex with other women to dull the pain and ease my conscience.’

  The most dramatic incident came when he flew in from New York on Kim’s twenty-fifth birthday. He’d planned to meet up with another woman before he went home to his girlfriend. When he landed, he discovered there was a message on his phone from Kim, who was far from happy: ‘I know you’re back in LA, you piece of shit!’ she shouted, before telling him she never wanted to see or talk to him ever again. Ray went off to have ‘fantastic’ sex with the other woman before trotting home, where he patched things up, at least temporarily.

  Then Kim fell out with Brandy over money. Ray didn’t go into any details – it wasn’t relevant to a discussion on cheating – but later Brandy’s mother, Sonja Norwood, filed a lawsuit against Kim and her siblings for running up credit card
charges without permission. Sonja alleged that in 2004 Kim had been authorised to make one purchase only on the Norwood American Express card in her capacity as Brandy’s stylist. She claimed that Kim made unauthorised purchases and passed the card number on to her brother and sisters, who then also made unauthorised purchases, including items from their two stores, DASH and Smooch. The suit alleged the total amount charged was $120,636. Sonja was asking for the return of the money plus 10 per cent interest.

  The Kardashians issued a statement: ‘The charges against the Kardashians are meritless. Both Kim and Khloé were employed by the Norwoods and never used their credit cards without express authorisation. The Kardashian family looks forward to proving the absurdity of these claims in court.’ Mrs Norwood, who told People magazine that the Kardashians had reneged on a promise to repay the debt, was also looking forward to her day in court.

  In the event, neither party got their wish and the case was dismissed with prejudice, which meant that it couldn’t be appealed or filed again. It was over permanently. Media reports described it as an ‘apparent settlement’, but the details remained confidential. Neither the Norwoods nor the Kardashians have subsequently commented on the lawsuit. Brandy and Kim are no longer friends and the singer was stony-faced when asked about Kim in a television interview in 2014.

  Once she and Ray J were no longer an item, Kim was free to date whomever she chose. She couldn’t help but notice that anyone Paris went out with was snapped by the paparazzi and appeared all over the magazines as a result. Such publicity would be gold dust for both her and, just as importantly, DASH.

  In May 2006, she went to the movie The Da Vinci Code in Calabasas one afternoon with Nick Lachey at a time when his divorce from Jessica Simpson was going through. When they came out, there was a mass of photographers waiting to record the event. Nick was very unimpressed and would later imply that it was Kim who tipped them off. When he was asked if those shots sparked the start of her rise to stardom, he replied, ‘That’s one way to interpret it.’