Image Source: Hulu
Kim Kardashian received major backlash when she was asked to offer advice to “women in business” in her March 2022 interview with Variety, and now she’s addressing the fallout. In the Oct. 13 episode of Hulu’s “The Kardashians,” the 41-year-old mogul is shown on a phone call with her mother, Kris Jenner, saying, “I’m assuming you saw all of the backlash on the Variety interview. I’m, like, mortified. I don’t know what to do because I, obviously, it’s all my fault.”
A clip then plays of Kim’s Variety interview, in which she says, “I have the best advice for women in business: get your f*cking ass up and work.” In a follow-up talking head interview, Kim elaborates on her comments, clarifying, “When I made that statement, it wasn’t a blanket statement towards all women, as if I didn’t think that women work hard, or respect the work that they do, because I see it every day. The most important people in my life that have shaped my life and shaped my career and helped me get to where I am today all are women. So I hated that that got misunderstood, and for that, I am so sorry.”
During her phone call with Kris, Kim contemplates making a statement to clarify what she “meant before it gets worse,” but Kris asks her to “sleep on it” first. Kim then further addresses the controversy while having lunch with sisters Kendall Jenner and Khloé Kardashian. She explains, “I said what I said about people working. Do I believe in that? Yes, I believe that you have to work hard in order to do that, but I was just so blindsided by how angry people got. . . . Enough people were triggered, so I wanna be responsible and understand why people feel the way that they do. I do understand that, that a lot of people weren’t given the same opportunities as us.”
Speaking specifically to Kendall she adds: “If people understood that yeah, we grew up privileged, but people don’t know the story of like, your dad and mom having to like sell their house in Hidden Hills because they couldn’t afford it . . . and mom really started her career and making money at 50. . . . I saw her work her ass off and figure it out, get her agent’s license, get a manager license to figure out like how to represent your dad, and that really inspired me to work.”
In another talking head interview, Kim continues, “I think people would assume that I got everything handed to me being on a TV show, but being on a reality show, let alone a reality show girl with a sex tape, does not open doors. And so I always felt like I had to work extra hard and harder to be taken seriously and for people to forget about my past.”
Kim previously responded to the initial backlash in an interview with “Good Morning America,” saying, “Well that statement that I said was without questions and conversation around it, and it became a sound bite really with no context . . . and the advice that I would give is just that having a social media presence and being on a reality show does not mean overnight success, and you have to really work hard to get there, even if it might seem like it’s easy.”