The Hollywood Reporter: In 2007, an L.A. family’s unvarnished docuseries launched on E!, and reality television, female body image, social media and, above all, the economy of celebrity were forever changed. Now the stars and producers of the megafranchise (nine TV spinoffs, hundreds of millions of dollars earned) reveal the secrets of its improbable explosion into the zeitgeist.
Wearing curve-hugging black workout pants and a white tank top, Kim Kardashian perches on a couch in the media room of her newly renovated Bel Air estate and sips Pedialyte through a straw. The makeup-free 36-year-old appears almost normal — certainly not like a mogul who, according to Forbes, banked $45.5 million the past year from a brand she built on self-aggrandizement, shameless product peddling and nude selfies. At the epicenter of this unprecedented trajectory remains E!’s Keeping Up With the Kardashians, a living record of her happily debauched family — Kourtney, 38; Khloe, 33; Rob, 30; Kendall, 21; and Kylie, 20; as well as matriarch Kris, 61, and her ex Caitlyn Jenner, 67 (who in 2015 transitioned from Bruce). On Sept. 24, a 90-minute special will celebrate the series’ 10th unapologetic year. It’s a head-scratching milestone for a show that, at its conception, offered viewers little more than a voyeuristic lens into the lives of a celebrity-adjacent family — but quickly became the mother ship for all their product extensions and the platform through which Kris and her five daughters ushered in the era of the reality celebrity as a brand…read more.