LOS ANGELES – The Kardashians pioneered celebrity-driven reality television with their show Keeping Up With The Kardashians (2007 to 2021), which launched a billion-dollar media empire and turned them into household names.
So the producers of their new series, The Kardashians (2022 to present), are likely only half-joking when they say they hope to keep this show going “till North’s marriage” – referring to the 10-year-old daughter of American star Kim Kardashian, 42, and former husband and American rap star Kanye West, 46.
The producers and two of the Kardashian sisters, Khloe and Kourtney, spoke earlier in 2023 at a Los Angeles event to promote the series ahead of its fourth season.
It returns to Disney+ on Thursday and continues to follow them through their personal and business dealings.
And Khloe reveals that watching one’s family drama play out on screen is like a therapy session that audience members are invited to witness.
For instance, an episode in an earlier season “turned out to be very therapeutic for me because it was the first time I spoke about my second pregnancy in a public way”, says the 39-year-old American personality.
She and her sisters Kim and Kourtney, 44, mother Kris Jenner, 67, and half-sisters Kendall Jenner, 27, and Kylie Jenner, 25, are the most famous members of the clan.
“It was important for me to express my journey, but in a place where I felt safe and could be vulnerable and explain why I kept it a secret for so long, because it was so hard for me to compute what was happening,” says Khloe, who has two children, aged five and one, with Canadian-American basketball player Tristan Thompson, 32.
“I’m grateful for that.”
And despite their fame and wealth – Kim is reportedly worth US$1.8 billion (S$2.46 million) and Kylie, US$750 million, thanks to endorsements and their clothing and make-up lines – the Kardashian-Jenners are pretty down-to-earth, says executive producer and showrunner Danielle King.
“When you really get to know and spend time with them, which I do every single day, what I’m surprised by are the things we have in common,” she adds.
“These are ordinary women with extraordinary stories.”
But Kourtney admits that having one’s dirty laundry aired on TV can be unsettling.
“I feel like it is really not the way that we are meant to live. You see and hear people sometimes talking about you, and to actually watch things like that is interesting,” she says.
She is expecting a child with her American rock musician-husband Travis Barker, 47, and has three children, aged eight to 13, with former boyfriend and American media personality Scott Disick, 40.
Issues surfaced on the show – such as the spat between Kim and Kourtney in Season 3 – sometimes spill over into the family’s group texts.
“Now I have to hear, in our family group chat, about these two (Kim and Kourtney) for the next four months,” Khloe says.
“I removed myself from the chat,” Kourtney chimes in.
“And I added you back,” Khloe responds, laughing. “I thought, ‘You’re actually going to sit here and listen to all of us.’ So I added her back to four chats and she keeps going, ‘How am I back in this chat?’”
Disney+ has already renewed the series for a fifth and sixth season, and another executive producer, Ben Winston, says: “We feel great about that.”
But it is impossible to predict what future seasons will look like “because where we’ve got to be really smart is we’ve got to change as (the Kardashians) change”.
And the family’s story has already progressed so much over the years, with this second series representing “a significant step forward” from their first one, he believes.
“It just felt elevated and more befitting of where the family were and who they are as these successful, powerful, brilliant women who still resonate with an audience because of this tight bond with the family unit.”
Winston says it both scares and excites him that he has “no idea what Seasons 5 and 6 are going to be about”.
“But I think it will continue to evolve,” he says.
The Kardashians 4 premieres on Thursday on Disney+.
