July 6, 2022 • 33 mins
Two powerhouse female entrepreneurs come together when Martha interviews Calabasas mogul and “momager” Kris Jenner. Having brought the family back to TV on Hulu's "The Kardashians", Kris talks daughters, empire-building, the time she passed on a Tinder deal, and adapting to the evolution of the modern family.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have Kylie's lipstick on right now. I love it.
I love that I told you before we started, you
look so pretty. I am speaking to one of the
women that I really greatly admire. I do, Chris Jenner,
(00:22):
mother of six, extraordinary businesswoman, homemaker and all around pretty
good girl. I was really impressed a few weeks ago
when I went to visit Chris Jenner at her beautiful
new home in Calubus's, California. I did not know what
to expect. I didn't welcome to my podcast, Chris Jenner.
(00:47):
I had been sort of to Calibras's before, but I
thought I was going to drive up a long, long
driveway into some fabulous, huge mansion, and instead we drive
up it's a crowded neighborhood. Houses are close together. They
do have some acreage around them, but it's such a
(01:08):
neighborhood and I thought, gosh, you would live in pure privacy.
But you have neighbors, and you can see your neighbors houses,
and despite all your notoriety and your popularity, you are
right there in a lovely neighborhood, knowing your neighbors. Your
neighbors know you, they know what goes on, and you
(01:31):
seem to coexist very perfectly. I know, I was really happy.
Oh good. You know, we've lived here in this neighborhood
since and so it's really hard to I've thought many
times and had other opportunities to move here and buy there,
and on and on, and you know, at the end
(01:52):
of the day, this is where I'm most comfortable. And
I'm also surrounded by all my kids. So Chloe's next
to all six, well five of them, five out of six.
I got lucky. The other, uh, the other little duckling, Kendall.
She's still in the city, but she came out here
the other day and said, Mom, I'm thinking about it.
(02:13):
So you never know what you're gonna get. But most
of us live here, and it's it's been one of
the most rewarding just experiences of my life living near
my kids. So and then I brought my mom out
from you know, San Diego and moved her up here,
so we're all together as a family. Well, let's go
back to two thousand and seven, when you were fifty
(02:36):
two years old in your second marriage, you have six kids,
and you come up with the idea that you're large
and beautiful family would make great reality TV and you
we're right, you had a good idea. Were you just
(02:58):
a bold woman or had you've been thinking about this
a long time? You know, exposing your entire family through
the eyes of the entire country as a pretty bold move.
I couldn't do it. My daughter is way too private
and no amount of persuading could ever persuade her. Well,
(03:21):
you know, it's interesting because at the time in my life,
it was really trying to figure out life and how
I was going to live the rest of my life
and support my kids. And Courtney and I had just
opened up a children's clothing store. The other girls opened
up a woman's boutique next door, and we were having
(03:43):
the time of our lives, working side by side, living
in hidden hills and in Calabasas and just trying to
figure it out. And everybody had always said to me
over the years, you know, especially in recent years from
that time around the early two thousand, to you guys
would make the best reality show, because I'm sure they
were watching other reality shows and you know, getting similar vibes.
(04:07):
And one day a casting director named Dina Kats came
over to the house, and she's the casting director for
Dancing with the Stars and other big TV shows, and
she said, this is the craziest night I've ever had.
She goes, you guys really need to talk to Ryan
Seacrest because he's looking for some reality TV and this
is a show waiting to happen. And you know, it
(04:29):
was chaos in the house. All the kids were there
and things were happening, and probably two or three celebrity
friends probably stopped by. And I had come from this
really big life in Beverly Hills before I got married
for the second time, so I knew everybody, and I
had all these relationships and I was well connected, but
I didn't obviously have a TV show. So she set
(04:52):
up a meeting with one of his executives, met with him,
that met with Ryan, and then before I knew it,
like thirty days went by and we were filming a
TV show. It happened really really fast, and it was,
you know, trying to sell what the premise of the
show was. They weren't really interested in a show about
(05:13):
Bruce or myself Bruce Jenner at the time, or myself.
They were interested in the girls and um, you know,
and what that might look like because it was a
younger network. In my mind, you know, that's probably those
are my words, but I felt like they were very
relevant for what was going on. Ryan was more interested
(05:33):
in the girls, right that you got that right? So
those five beauties, Now, what did you think having five
beautiful girls? What ages were they? Then? Kendall and Kylie
were nine and ten, so they were in school, and
so my thinking was listening. My motivation to do this
was really about we could maybe make this into something
(05:58):
really fun, work together as a family, and we could
pay the bills. And I said to Courtney, you know,
this is great because we have this store, this children's
store that's so much fun. And that was our passion
at the time. And my mother had had a children's
store for about forty five years in Lajoya, so that's
what I knew, and that's what I grew up with.
(06:18):
So I thought, oh, my gosh, we're going to sell
more T shirts. We're gonna have customers coming in from
everywhere to buy kids clothes and and then go to
the girl's shop. And that was really my thinking at
that very moment. But yeah, Kendall and Kylie were kids
at school and I thought, well, they can film if
they want to when they come home from school and
(06:39):
after they do their homework and the other girls. There's
so much going on constantly that you know there'll be
plenty to film and to talk about. And you keep
all of this. And do you know when they were
all born? And within their do you know the birthdays
of all the grandchildren? You know? I'm lucky. I know
eleven grandchildren's names. Um, I could get pretty close. I
(07:02):
could get pretty close. But I do know my kids
names in their birthdays. Thank god, I'm not getting who
knows in a couple of years. My memory is wild.
Oh no, your your memory is pretty fantasts I was
testing you at lunch. You remembered everything. You know everything.
It's just it's incredible because that many, that many children,
(07:23):
and that many grandchildren. And I was doing my math
before I called you today. And thank goodness, I was
only fourteen when you were born, because otherwise I would
feel like I was your mom. No, we are spirits.
It would have been pretty impossible to be your mom.
I didn't get my period till I was fourteen, so
I could not be physically your mom. Goodness, but you are.
(07:47):
You are a role model to so many other mothers.
My mother would have loved you, because she was also
a mother of six, and she balanced and juggled and
did everything with a job. She was a teacher, but
she went to work every day. She taught sixth grade,
and she was as good as you are at balancing
(08:08):
the various personalities of the kids. Because all your children
are so different from one another that I've seen so far,
and those differences show up very very strongly on your show.
What do you think, Well, they're so different. They all
have you know, they have this this common denominator if
(08:29):
you will, that obviously we're all from the same family,
and they most of them have children, so they have
similar lifestyles. And you're the common denominator because there are
two days, right, But you're the common denominator, and you're
very balanced nature as as it appears anyway, both on
the show and and in real life, you seem to
(08:51):
have that. You're like the anchor. I think I'm just
really very organized when I was a young mom, you know,
I think that's what attracted me so much to you, seriously,
and that's why you were such an inspiration to me
for decades, because it gave me great pleasure to have
everything in order. And I'm I love celebrating everything. And
(09:13):
I think when you have a lot of kids and
you have all these wonderful memories and you have things
that you celebrate, and you know, the holidays, and I
just made everything, especially when they were little. I loved
making everything really special. That gave me great pleasure. I
mean to go by a Halloween decoration from you, and
(09:35):
I mean I had one year I had, like in
two thousand or two thousand and two or three, I
remember decorating my whole front yard and crows because you
came out with crows for Halloween. And I thought, oh,
I'm having the happiest day of my life because I'm
you know, and I think your kids see that energy
and that sense of you know, juata vie that you
(09:56):
can create in your family, and it just gave me
so much happiness that I had so many kids and
it was so much fun. And you just no matter
what's going on and what you have to overcome, any
kind of adversity, any kind of problems or anything else,
you deal with that, but you also show this side
that you want everything to be okay and you want
(10:18):
your kids to grow up with these great lessons that
you can teach them in life. Well, a lot of
that comes out on your show so much. And and
I enjoyed very much the first episode, Oh good of
your new show. I watched the the entire thing, and
I really did enjoy it. And I especially enjoyed you
have wonderful cameraman to those beautiful drone shots and the
(10:40):
and the wonderful editing. It's it's a very very good show.
And audience, I just want you to know it's it
was the most watched show ever on Hulu, right that
crazy when I they called me to tell me, and
I was literally I was so proud and so excited,
and so you know, we've done this for so many years.
(11:02):
We were at E four almost fifteen years, twenty seasons,
and when we started this new chapter, I was so
excited about doing something. I mean, who doesn't want to
work for Disney. I mean I was pinching myself. I thought,
this is the greatest thing ever to have a new
chapter and do something new. And I was happy that
it was streaming, and I was happy that, you know,
(11:25):
we kind of said, well, we're not going to do
this anymore, and then we went never mind, Yes we
are because we love doing it so much. It gets
you together, it keeps you together, and there's a thread
that is so strong that's not going to snap anytime soon.
And that's pretty remarkable. That's a remarkable feat for a mom.
When we started filming again and we were filming for Hulu,
(11:48):
and I had a moment. We had about a year
off and I had a moment when I thought, Okay,
are we as anybody gonna still want to be watching us?
And then all of a sudden, that got closer and
closer to when we were going to begin filming, and
we were getting more excited and I was getting a
little anxious. And then all of a sudden, I said
to myself, wait a second, Kylie's pregnant. Courtney doesn't even
(12:11):
know it yet, she's getting engaged. And I went down
the list of all the things that were happening naturally
in our family, and you really just can't make this
stuff up. It's not like you could create these moments
that are life changing things that are going on and
create something that's not real. So that made me really
happy that we had so much to share. When I
(12:41):
wrote a little essay about Kim for Time magazine when
she was awarded the Time one hundred of Yes distinction.
I wrote that you were the modern day Brady Bunch.
And I think that that with social media, has made
you the most popular family in the whole wide world,
and the most watched family and the most admired. Also
(13:03):
the most talked about and the most watched. I mean,
it's crazy. So you have a standard that you must
hold up any flaws in that theory of mine, that
you are going to keep that demeanor. I mean, this
is this is hard. Do you ever say, oh my gosh,
I can't do it? Does anybody say that? Not yet?
I think the last go round with our last network,
(13:26):
at the end of that, Courtney was a little burnout.
You know. She was the first to say, I'm tired.
This is you know, really draining on my personal life
and this and that. But I think that we all
saw that, and we all saw how she came back
and she's better than ever. And you know what's interesting,
kind of a fun fact when I think about it,
(13:47):
I it really blows my mind is when we started
filming in two thousand seven, there was barely Twitter. I
remember Ryan Seacrest calling up Kim and going, you know,
or he actually he called me and he said, make
sure you tell him about this little thing called Twitter.
She needs to start tweeting. And I was like, what,
She's not a bird, She's not gonna do what. So
(14:08):
it was funny because there was no Instagram, there was
no Snapchat, there was no TikTok. So we kind of
grew along with the social media audience, who I think
became at a very early stage sort of emotionally invested
in what we were doing. And they kind of everybody
(14:31):
liked either one of us or the other, so they
got kind of into that. And I think because there's
so many of us, that's what makes it so successful. Yeah,
well it's a multiplier effect. I mean, you have altogether,
you have an extraordinary number of followers all together. You
far exceed the most popular of all instagrammers, re alto
(14:55):
the great soccer player. But your daughter, I guess it's Kylie.
Kylie's the followed female on the Internet in the world
and she has I mean hundreds of millions of followers
worldwide and a cosmetics brand that youngsters from my granddaughter's
age eleven all the way up to me. What's so
(15:16):
great about the girls, and the thing I'm the proudest
of is their hearts. They're just really great human beings
and they're so kind and they would give you the
shirt off their back. They would help anybody in need.
Their their wonderful people, and they have great work ethic,
and they're honest, and they are the best mothers. And
(15:41):
my son is the greatest dad in the world. And
I just I'm so proud of that. I'm proud of
I'm proud of who they are and what they all
did together to get to where we are today. It's
not like we just woke up and said, oh, you know,
we want to be famous and do this and that
it's really it was really there was more of a
purpose in working, which is we needed to set you know,
(16:05):
said it before we needed to pay the bills, and
that was really exciting that we found something that worked
and that clicked with everybody. But then along the way
to be able to do it with each other. If
one of us was doing this and had this notoriety
and this success in various ways, it would be a
(16:29):
ride for that person. But the fact that we do
it all together at the same time is so rewarding
for us. You're all building sustainable businesses that do have
a long lifespan because the girls, first of all, are
so young, they have years and years to go with
their individual brands. And I'm somewhat of a brand expert
(16:52):
at this point, and I can see how how strong
these brands are and how you are continually building on
those brands, sensible products to the brands that people will
find exciting or desirable or whatever. Like a young woman
like Kendall to embrace a tequila brand, for example, eight
one eight tequila hand crafted from Jalisco, Mexico. I've tasted it.
(17:18):
It's delicious tequila. She takes it one step further, and
that's what I love about the girls. Like in Jalisco,
where they make the tequila, they're left with the agave
plants and everything they used to make the tequila with.
They take the discarded materials and make it into these
bricks and they helped build homes for the people in
(17:43):
that community. So all the fibers from the agaves or
they were making these bricks. It's fascinating. And so Kendall
did a whole video on it and interviewed the people
down there, and she got really involved in the community.
And that's what I think is so great. Instead of
just you know it was and about slapping your name
on something, Kendall has to get into the fiber. What's
(18:04):
happening with all the things that she does, from her
modeling to everything else. But I was really fascinated that
you could even do that with plant material. Oh sure,
it's it's phenomenon was really cool. And then we have
Kim who's making fantastic undergarments Skims Skims. I love the name.
(18:25):
I love the name Skims say. It's very it's very
clever to take the s an edit to the Kim
I know her names in the middle she's so proud
of Yeah, yeah, it's so great. And also her fragrances
and what I also like very much about her her
undergarments is that she puts them in the ads on
(18:46):
every size body, which is so so I mean, that
is admirable because it's not just the skinny size six,
short girls, on tall girls. You can see that they
work on everybody. I think that's so great because she
I think I told you this story once, but you know,
(19:08):
Kim has wanted to do a shapewear line for ten years.
I mean, she's just always talked about during her own shapewear.
And I'll never forget the time I showed up her
and Kendall were doing a red carpet and can years ago,
and I had to go to the hotel because they
put you down in a special hotel the day of
(19:29):
that you're walking a red carpet because the traffic is
so crazy. So these girls are up in this room
on whatever floor, and I walk in to get Kim,
thinking she's going to be ready, and she's bending over
a bathtub that's full of hot water and about a
gazillion tea bags and she's dying shapewear that she had
(19:49):
cut up into various shapes and sizes and pieces and
getting these certain skin tones just the way she wanted
them with the tea bags. And then everything was, you know,
getting laid out to dry, and I said, what are
you doing? She goes, I'm making my own shape wear.
And this was years and years ago, so changing them
skin colors. Yeah, So now she has this range, this
(20:12):
very inclusive range of beautiful skin tones for anybody to match,
and all these different shapes and sizes so anybody can
fit her product. And that's what I love so much about.
It's just like good American and the genes that Chloe has.
It's I think size zero too. It goes up and
up and up, and anybody can find something. So I
(20:33):
just I'm thrilled that the girls have built these businesses
in these brands and made them so inclusive and easy
to fit. Can I ask, are they competitive? You know
what they're not. You will see Chloe doing a Skims ad.
You will see Kim promoting Kylie's Kylie Cosmetics. You will
(20:57):
see they're so supportive of one another, and that makes
me so happy because they love and they love giving
each other business advice or you know, weighing in on
different things that maybe one has done and the other
hasn't tackled yet. It's really nice. It's like a built
in focus group. Now, you're beautiful offices that you have
(21:19):
out there in California? Do you go to the office
pretty much every day? I go several times a week.
I don't go every single Like today, I was going
to go to the office and I ended up staying
home because we had a house guest and I had
things to do here. And a lot going on this afternoon,
So I get over there because it's really close to
my house, but I don't go every single day. Well,
(21:42):
I've seen I've seen pictures of it. I haven't visited
your offices yet, but it looks so impressive and again,
clean and friendly, beautiful atmosphere in which to collaborate, to
talk to, to confer with all these various businesses, and
that you keep them all top of mind again is
an admirable fee. But you really, you really are a momager,
(22:04):
aren't you? Well? I try, you know. I think that
I wear a lot of different hats, for sure, and
I think that my favorite hat is mom. But what
I've realized when I do have the opportunity to take
a few days off or just to settle down or
be on a vacation, which is almost never, but if
I have some time off, I realize how much I
(22:25):
miss it when I get back into it, and I'm like, Okay,
this is where I get my energy. This is how
I I feel like I shine. Is when I'm working
and trying to navigate through something and trying to troubleshoot something.
I feel like for every problem, I can find some
sort of a solution. So I'm a real solution based
(22:48):
person and I love trying to figure things out and
I can point and shoot. You know, I'm really good
at saying, Okay, let's do this, this, this, and this,
and then figuring out how to get it done. What
I did? Did you shoot down that ultimately succeeded? Is
there something to remember saying no to something that finally
(23:08):
became a big blockbuster? You know what? It's so funny.
I had this conversation with somebody the other day. I
think it was Emma Greed from Skims. She works with
us on a Good American and she said, remember the
time when somebody wanted to work with Rob in the
back end of it. I think it was Tender the
(23:29):
dating app. And I was like, oh no, he no,
hell no, no dating app. You know this is before
my dating app. What are you talking about? I had
no idea. Then we were talking about it yesterday and
we were laughing, and I said, oh, my gosh, you
know how funny Barry Diller has made many billions of
(23:50):
dollars off of those dating apps. Isn't that crazy that
I just I didn't get it at the time, So,
you know, Mama doesn't always know best, but I try.
I try. You have businesses with actual products, yeah, and
you've done very very well. What about Push? I don't
really know. Posh Phush is a lifestyle platform where Courtney
(24:16):
has really developed this following of people who really want
to get to the bottom of all the amazing products
that she showcases, and she partners with other brands to
shine a big, bright light on things that are good
for the planet and that are a lifestyle of eating
(24:36):
healthy or vegan or gluten free. She is she loves
products that are safe for the environment, and she focuses
in showcases the greatest stuff. It's almost like when I
read everything she talks about and everything she highlights and showcases,
or she has a collab with. She did a collaboration
(24:57):
with vital Protein the call gen powder that you put
in a drink, and they did so well with that.
And then she'll suddenly do something with a light mask
for you know, sort of an anti aging kind of
light mask that I love to put on because she
tells me it's going to make me a hundred years
(25:18):
younger if I keep doing it, So I do it,
and look, she just you're so cute. She comes up
with some of the greatest partnerships and focuses on showcasing
them on her push website. So that's been really fun
and just she has retreats that they'll do that are
(25:38):
sponsored by huge, big blue chip brands, and just focusing
on bringing the awareness of all of this stuff to
the forefront. So, you know, I've been doing a lot
of reading about you and your family, and I just
(26:00):
wanted to touch back. You married, and how old were
you when you married? Robert Kardashian twenty two. I met
him when I was seventeen, almost eighteen. I met him
at the del Mar race track and I was there
with some friends. I wasn't old enough to place a bet,
so I had to stand over to the side of
(26:20):
the you know, people at the betting window. My friends
were betting, and I would give them my three dollars
and they would place a bet for me. He came
up to me and introduced himself, and that's how we met.
So he sort of picked you off, he did at
the race track where I didn't belong betting betting at
the race track. I thought you were a cool girl. Yeah,
(26:40):
we dated and eventually got engaged and got married when
I was twenty two, and I got pregnant on our honeymoon,
and I had Courtney nine months, two weeks and two
days later. And I know that because all the Armenian
ladies were probably counting, so I was no. I promised
I got pregnant on my honeymoon. You know, those are
(27:01):
the days that I'm very old fashioned and right. You
want to be very proper, right then with that big
Armenian family, you bet. So how does it feel when
you're girls are going out and getting pregnant with right
men who are not there or not. Their husbands have evolved,
haven't you, I guess so, you know, I get more
and more understanding, and I get what this generation and
(27:27):
I have so many generations now in my family. I
guess there's such a big age difference. You're embracing what's
happening in the world. You have to, you know. I
think I've been through so many things in my life
that hindsight is very important in my life because I
learned so much along the way that I knew nothing
(27:49):
about before. And I think that I'm very I do.
I embrace what is in front of me, and I
think that I am easy once I under stand it.
You know, it's like with the girls, they could throw
anything at me, and I'm here for them. They know
that there's nothing that I would judge, not at all.
(28:09):
I mean, you just I just never would. The last
thing I want to talk about it in terms of
product is safely. Oh my safely cleaning products means so
much to me. I mean, when I visited your home,
you have an impeccably clean home, sparkling clean. That means
so much coming from you. And by the way, everybody,
(28:29):
it doesn't smell like anything but home. There's no irritating fragrance.
There's no obvious any smells anywhere. It just smells like
a beautiful, clean environment. And that I guess is safely. Well,
it's safely. And we had a fragrance called Rise and
it came in this beautiful it comes in this beautiful
(28:52):
green packaging and yesterday, funny that you should ask, we
came out with a new fragrance in this beautiful, serene
baby baby lavender and some of it's just cream packaging
and it's called Calm and it has a light light
lavender scent. It's the most beautiful scent and the most
(29:17):
beautiful packaging. I actually got a call from Chloe this
morning and she said, Mom, I'm into the calm packaging
And I said, okay, but its way. She goes, this
is what I can get. She goes, this is my aesthetic.
I said, okay, Chloe, it's on its way. So it's
really when you say it. When you say it has
a scent, is that infused into the product. And it's
(29:38):
all plant based. It doesn't have anything bad and it
like parabins and all these other things. But it's really fantastic.
It works like nobody's business. I mean, that's what I'm
so impressed with. We sell it at Walmart exclusively right now,
we have it on get safely dot com, and then
you can get it at Walmart stores across the country
(30:00):
and it's doing really really well there and I'm so
proud and happy about it. But I'm really happy that
the packaging is wonderful. But it really works, and that's
what I've I've used so many products. When Courtney first
started doing Push a few years ago, she was using
some products that she didn't have the mom poush but
(30:21):
in her home, you know, she was trying to teach
me about plant based products and how to be better
for the environment and the planet. And so I was
trying to get on her bandwagon. And I went over
to her house and it just never quite smelled as
clean as I wanted my house to smell. So when
she went on vacation, I went over there with my friend,
(30:43):
these two friends and one of her housekeepers was there,
and we cleaned her entire house with products she would
have been so angry about. It was so funny and
I thought, oh, she'll never smell it. It just made
me feel better to clean her house. I don't know
why I felt like I needed to do that, but
I did. It sounds like me, yeah, right, we're so.
(31:04):
I'm like a lunatic when it comes to stuff like that.
So I was over there with my gloves on and
scrubbing floors and I really was. It's like my favorite
thing to do. And when I finished a week later,
when she came home, she still smelled a really strong,
ammonious smell of what I was using. Now, when I
think about that and I think about what we're making
(31:25):
was safely, it's there's such a difference, but it's a
product that really works so I wanted something that worked
like that but didn't smell like that, so we nailed it.
Congratulations on that. Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited. You are
an extraordinary human being to be able to embrace all
that into and it does not stress, doesn't show on
(31:46):
your face. One ioted idea, well, listen, Chris has such
a lovely face that doesn't show doesn't show stress whatsoever.
And I'm sure sometimes you feel stressed, of course, but
look you look, you look daily, but you cope with
it better than anybody I've met in the last few years. Really,
(32:07):
and truly, you're amazing. Thank you, and I cannot wait
to see what evolves with the new program. I cannot
wait to see what evolves with all your myriad businesses,
because this is really the dynasty of not just the decade,
but of maybe the beginning of the new century. I mean,
it's just incredible what you're doing, and I admire it tremendously.
(32:32):
And I could continue with this talk forever and ever
and ever, but I think we've touched on on so
much and I think there's lots more to talk about,
and maybe in a few months we can have another
conversation here for that, Martha. You know that, and thank
you so much for having me on your show and
this podcast. It's been And you look amazingly beautiful. You
(32:54):
had one of the most beautiful dresses at the met
Ball this year in two you looked amazed than and
I was looking through all the two pictures that I
didn't go to the ball, but I was looking through
the pictures that the New York Times published, and you
stood out more than pretty much anybody that means the world,
(33:14):
that means the world. I had a ball, and I
really did time with my kids. Well great and again
congratulations and we'll talk against so thank you
I have Kylie's lipstick on right now. I love it.
I love that I told you before we started, you
look so pretty. I am speaking to one of the
women that I really greatly admire. I do, Chris Jenner,
(00:22):
mother of six, extraordinary businesswoman, homemaker and all around pretty
good girl. I was really impressed a few weeks ago
when I went to visit Chris Jenner at her beautiful
new home in Calubus's, California. I did not know what
to expect. I didn't welcome to my podcast, Chris Jenner.
(00:47):
I had been sort of to Calibras's before, but I
thought I was going to drive up a long, long
driveway into some fabulous, huge mansion, and instead we drive
up it's a crowded neighborhood. Houses are close together. They
do have some acreage around them, but it's such a
(01:08):
neighborhood and I thought, gosh, you would live in pure privacy.
But you have neighbors, and you can see your neighbors houses,
and despite all your notoriety and your popularity, you are
right there in a lovely neighborhood, knowing your neighbors. Your
neighbors know you, they know what goes on, and you
(01:31):
seem to coexist very perfectly. I know, I was really happy.
Oh good. You know, we've lived here in this neighborhood
since and so it's really hard to I've thought many
times and had other opportunities to move here and buy there,
and on and on, and you know, at the end
(01:52):
of the day, this is where I'm most comfortable. And
I'm also surrounded by all my kids. So Chloe's next
to all six, well five of them, five out of six.
I got lucky. The other, uh, the other little duckling, Kendall.
She's still in the city, but she came out here
the other day and said, Mom, I'm thinking about it.
(02:13):
So you never know what you're gonna get. But most
of us live here, and it's it's been one of
the most rewarding just experiences of my life living near
my kids. So and then I brought my mom out
from you know, San Diego and moved her up here,
so we're all together as a family. Well, let's go
back to two thousand and seven, when you were fifty
(02:36):
two years old in your second marriage, you have six kids,
and you come up with the idea that you're large
and beautiful family would make great reality TV and you
we're right, you had a good idea. Were you just
(02:58):
a bold woman or had you've been thinking about this
a long time? You know, exposing your entire family through
the eyes of the entire country as a pretty bold move.
I couldn't do it. My daughter is way too private
and no amount of persuading could ever persuade her. Well,
(03:21):
you know, it's interesting because at the time in my life,
it was really trying to figure out life and how
I was going to live the rest of my life
and support my kids. And Courtney and I had just
opened up a children's clothing store. The other girls opened
up a woman's boutique next door, and we were having
(03:43):
the time of our lives, working side by side, living
in hidden hills and in Calabasas and just trying to
figure it out. And everybody had always said to me
over the years, you know, especially in recent years from
that time around the early two thousand, to you guys
would make the best reality show, because I'm sure they
were watching other reality shows and you know, getting similar vibes.
(04:07):
And one day a casting director named Dina Kats came
over to the house, and she's the casting director for
Dancing with the Stars and other big TV shows, and
she said, this is the craziest night I've ever had.
She goes, you guys really need to talk to Ryan
Seacrest because he's looking for some reality TV and this
is a show waiting to happen. And you know, it
(04:29):
was chaos in the house. All the kids were there
and things were happening, and probably two or three celebrity
friends probably stopped by. And I had come from this
really big life in Beverly Hills before I got married
for the second time, so I knew everybody, and I
had all these relationships and I was well connected, but
I didn't obviously have a TV show. So she set
(04:52):
up a meeting with one of his executives, met with him,
that met with Ryan, and then before I knew it,
like thirty days went by and we were filming a
TV show. It happened really really fast, and it was,
you know, trying to sell what the premise of the
show was. They weren't really interested in a show about
(05:13):
Bruce or myself Bruce Jenner at the time, or myself.
They were interested in the girls and um, you know,
and what that might look like because it was a
younger network. In my mind, you know, that's probably those
are my words, but I felt like they were very
relevant for what was going on. Ryan was more interested
(05:33):
in the girls, right that you got that right? So
those five beauties, Now, what did you think having five
beautiful girls? What ages were they? Then? Kendall and Kylie
were nine and ten, so they were in school, and
so my thinking was listening. My motivation to do this
was really about we could maybe make this into something
(05:58):
really fun, work together as a family, and we could
pay the bills. And I said to Courtney, you know,
this is great because we have this store, this children's
store that's so much fun. And that was our passion
at the time. And my mother had had a children's
store for about forty five years in Lajoya, so that's
what I knew, and that's what I grew up with.
(06:18):
So I thought, oh, my gosh, we're going to sell
more T shirts. We're gonna have customers coming in from
everywhere to buy kids clothes and and then go to
the girl's shop. And that was really my thinking at
that very moment. But yeah, Kendall and Kylie were kids
at school and I thought, well, they can film if
they want to when they come home from school and
(06:39):
after they do their homework and the other girls. There's
so much going on constantly that you know there'll be
plenty to film and to talk about. And you keep
all of this. And do you know when they were
all born? And within their do you know the birthdays
of all the grandchildren? You know? I'm lucky. I know
eleven grandchildren's names. Um, I could get pretty close. I
(07:02):
could get pretty close. But I do know my kids
names in their birthdays. Thank god, I'm not getting who
knows in a couple of years. My memory is wild.
Oh no, your your memory is pretty fantasts I was
testing you at lunch. You remembered everything. You know everything.
It's just it's incredible because that many, that many children,
(07:23):
and that many grandchildren. And I was doing my math
before I called you today. And thank goodness, I was
only fourteen when you were born, because otherwise I would
feel like I was your mom. No, we are spirits.
It would have been pretty impossible to be your mom.
I didn't get my period till I was fourteen, so
I could not be physically your mom. Goodness, but you are.
(07:47):
You are a role model to so many other mothers.
My mother would have loved you, because she was also
a mother of six, and she balanced and juggled and
did everything with a job. She was a teacher, but
she went to work every day. She taught sixth grade,
and she was as good as you are at balancing
(08:08):
the various personalities of the kids. Because all your children
are so different from one another that I've seen so far,
and those differences show up very very strongly on your show.
What do you think, Well, they're so different. They all
have you know, they have this this common denominator if
(08:29):
you will, that obviously we're all from the same family,
and they most of them have children, so they have
similar lifestyles. And you're the common denominator because there are
two days, right, But you're the common denominator, and you're
very balanced nature as as it appears anyway, both on
the show and and in real life, you seem to
(08:51):
have that. You're like the anchor. I think I'm just
really very organized when I was a young mom, you know,
I think that's what attracted me so much to you, seriously,
and that's why you were such an inspiration to me
for decades, because it gave me great pleasure to have
everything in order. And I'm I love celebrating everything. And
(09:13):
I think when you have a lot of kids and
you have all these wonderful memories and you have things
that you celebrate, and you know, the holidays, and I
just made everything, especially when they were little. I loved
making everything really special. That gave me great pleasure. I
mean to go by a Halloween decoration from you, and
(09:35):
I mean I had one year I had, like in
two thousand or two thousand and two or three, I
remember decorating my whole front yard and crows because you
came out with crows for Halloween. And I thought, oh,
I'm having the happiest day of my life because I'm
you know, and I think your kids see that energy
and that sense of you know, juata vie that you
(09:56):
can create in your family, and it just gave me
so much happiness that I had so many kids and
it was so much fun. And you just no matter
what's going on and what you have to overcome, any
kind of adversity, any kind of problems or anything else,
you deal with that, but you also show this side
that you want everything to be okay and you want
(10:18):
your kids to grow up with these great lessons that
you can teach them in life. Well, a lot of
that comes out on your show so much. And and
I enjoyed very much the first episode, Oh good of
your new show. I watched the the entire thing, and
I really did enjoy it. And I especially enjoyed you
have wonderful cameraman to those beautiful drone shots and the
(10:40):
and the wonderful editing. It's it's a very very good show.
And audience, I just want you to know it's it
was the most watched show ever on Hulu, right that
crazy when I they called me to tell me, and
I was literally I was so proud and so excited,
and so you know, we've done this for so many years.
(11:02):
We were at E four almost fifteen years, twenty seasons,
and when we started this new chapter, I was so
excited about doing something. I mean, who doesn't want to
work for Disney. I mean I was pinching myself. I thought,
this is the greatest thing ever to have a new
chapter and do something new. And I was happy that
it was streaming, and I was happy that, you know,
(11:25):
we kind of said, well, we're not going to do
this anymore, and then we went never mind, Yes we
are because we love doing it so much. It gets
you together, it keeps you together, and there's a thread
that is so strong that's not going to snap anytime soon.
And that's pretty remarkable. That's a remarkable feat for a mom.
When we started filming again and we were filming for Hulu,
(11:48):
and I had a moment. We had about a year
off and I had a moment when I thought, Okay,
are we as anybody gonna still want to be watching us?
And then all of a sudden, that got closer and
closer to when we were going to begin filming, and
we were getting more excited and I was getting a
little anxious. And then all of a sudden, I said
to myself, wait a second, Kylie's pregnant. Courtney doesn't even
(12:11):
know it yet, she's getting engaged. And I went down
the list of all the things that were happening naturally
in our family, and you really just can't make this
stuff up. It's not like you could create these moments
that are life changing things that are going on and
create something that's not real. So that made me really
happy that we had so much to share. When I
(12:41):
wrote a little essay about Kim for Time magazine when
she was awarded the Time one hundred of Yes distinction.
I wrote that you were the modern day Brady Bunch.
And I think that that with social media, has made
you the most popular family in the whole wide world,
and the most watched family and the most admired. Also
(13:03):
the most talked about and the most watched. I mean,
it's crazy. So you have a standard that you must
hold up any flaws in that theory of mine, that
you are going to keep that demeanor. I mean, this
is this is hard. Do you ever say, oh my gosh,
I can't do it? Does anybody say that? Not yet?
I think the last go round with our last network,
(13:26):
at the end of that, Courtney was a little burnout.
You know. She was the first to say, I'm tired.
This is you know, really draining on my personal life
and this and that. But I think that we all
saw that, and we all saw how she came back
and she's better than ever. And you know what's interesting,
kind of a fun fact when I think about it,
(13:47):
I it really blows my mind is when we started
filming in two thousand seven, there was barely Twitter. I
remember Ryan Seacrest calling up Kim and going, you know,
or he actually he called me and he said, make
sure you tell him about this little thing called Twitter.
She needs to start tweeting. And I was like, what,
She's not a bird, She's not gonna do what. So
(14:08):
it was funny because there was no Instagram, there was
no Snapchat, there was no TikTok. So we kind of
grew along with the social media audience, who I think
became at a very early stage sort of emotionally invested
in what we were doing. And they kind of everybody
(14:31):
liked either one of us or the other, so they
got kind of into that. And I think because there's
so many of us, that's what makes it so successful. Yeah,
well it's a multiplier effect. I mean, you have altogether,
you have an extraordinary number of followers all together. You
far exceed the most popular of all instagrammers, re alto
(14:55):
the great soccer player. But your daughter, I guess it's Kylie.
Kylie's the followed female on the Internet in the world
and she has I mean hundreds of millions of followers
worldwide and a cosmetics brand that youngsters from my granddaughter's
age eleven all the way up to me. What's so
(15:16):
great about the girls, and the thing I'm the proudest
of is their hearts. They're just really great human beings
and they're so kind and they would give you the
shirt off their back. They would help anybody in need.
Their their wonderful people, and they have great work ethic,
and they're honest, and they are the best mothers. And
(15:41):
my son is the greatest dad in the world. And
I just I'm so proud of that. I'm proud of
I'm proud of who they are and what they all
did together to get to where we are today. It's
not like we just woke up and said, oh, you know,
we want to be famous and do this and that
it's really it was really there was more of a
purpose in working, which is we needed to set you know,
(16:05):
said it before we needed to pay the bills, and
that was really exciting that we found something that worked
and that clicked with everybody. But then along the way
to be able to do it with each other. If
one of us was doing this and had this notoriety
and this success in various ways, it would be a
(16:29):
ride for that person. But the fact that we do
it all together at the same time is so rewarding
for us. You're all building sustainable businesses that do have
a long lifespan because the girls, first of all, are
so young, they have years and years to go with
their individual brands. And I'm somewhat of a brand expert
(16:52):
at this point, and I can see how how strong
these brands are and how you are continually building on
those brands, sensible products to the brands that people will
find exciting or desirable or whatever. Like a young woman
like Kendall to embrace a tequila brand, for example, eight
one eight tequila hand crafted from Jalisco, Mexico. I've tasted it.
(17:18):
It's delicious tequila. She takes it one step further, and
that's what I love about the girls. Like in Jalisco,
where they make the tequila, they're left with the agave
plants and everything they used to make the tequila with.
They take the discarded materials and make it into these
bricks and they helped build homes for the people in
(17:43):
that community. So all the fibers from the agaves or
they were making these bricks. It's fascinating. And so Kendall
did a whole video on it and interviewed the people
down there, and she got really involved in the community.
And that's what I think is so great. Instead of
just you know it was and about slapping your name
on something, Kendall has to get into the fiber. What's
(18:04):
happening with all the things that she does, from her
modeling to everything else. But I was really fascinated that
you could even do that with plant material. Oh sure,
it's it's phenomenon was really cool. And then we have
Kim who's making fantastic undergarments Skims Skims. I love the name.
(18:25):
I love the name Skims say. It's very it's very
clever to take the s an edit to the Kim
I know her names in the middle she's so proud
of Yeah, yeah, it's so great. And also her fragrances
and what I also like very much about her her
undergarments is that she puts them in the ads on
(18:46):
every size body, which is so so I mean, that
is admirable because it's not just the skinny size six,
short girls, on tall girls. You can see that they
work on everybody. I think that's so great because she
I think I told you this story once, but you know,
(19:08):
Kim has wanted to do a shapewear line for ten years.
I mean, she's just always talked about during her own shapewear.
And I'll never forget the time I showed up her
and Kendall were doing a red carpet and can years ago,
and I had to go to the hotel because they
put you down in a special hotel the day of
(19:29):
that you're walking a red carpet because the traffic is
so crazy. So these girls are up in this room
on whatever floor, and I walk in to get Kim,
thinking she's going to be ready, and she's bending over
a bathtub that's full of hot water and about a
gazillion tea bags and she's dying shapewear that she had
(19:49):
cut up into various shapes and sizes and pieces and
getting these certain skin tones just the way she wanted
them with the tea bags. And then everything was, you know,
getting laid out to dry, and I said, what are
you doing? She goes, I'm making my own shape wear.
And this was years and years ago, so changing them
skin colors. Yeah, So now she has this range, this
(20:12):
very inclusive range of beautiful skin tones for anybody to match,
and all these different shapes and sizes so anybody can
fit her product. And that's what I love so much about.
It's just like good American and the genes that Chloe has.
It's I think size zero too. It goes up and
up and up, and anybody can find something. So I
(20:33):
just I'm thrilled that the girls have built these businesses
in these brands and made them so inclusive and easy
to fit. Can I ask, are they competitive? You know
what they're not. You will see Chloe doing a Skims ad.
You will see Kim promoting Kylie's Kylie Cosmetics. You will
(20:57):
see they're so supportive of one another, and that makes
me so happy because they love and they love giving
each other business advice or you know, weighing in on
different things that maybe one has done and the other
hasn't tackled yet. It's really nice. It's like a built
in focus group. Now, you're beautiful offices that you have
(21:19):
out there in California? Do you go to the office
pretty much every day? I go several times a week.
I don't go every single Like today, I was going
to go to the office and I ended up staying
home because we had a house guest and I had
things to do here. And a lot going on this afternoon,
So I get over there because it's really close to
my house, but I don't go every single day. Well,
(21:42):
I've seen I've seen pictures of it. I haven't visited
your offices yet, but it looks so impressive and again,
clean and friendly, beautiful atmosphere in which to collaborate, to
talk to, to confer with all these various businesses, and
that you keep them all top of mind again is
an admirable fee. But you really, you really are a momager,
(22:04):
aren't you? Well? I try, you know. I think that
I wear a lot of different hats, for sure, and
I think that my favorite hat is mom. But what
I've realized when I do have the opportunity to take
a few days off or just to settle down or
be on a vacation, which is almost never, but if
I have some time off, I realize how much I
(22:25):
miss it when I get back into it, and I'm like, Okay,
this is where I get my energy. This is how
I I feel like I shine. Is when I'm working
and trying to navigate through something and trying to troubleshoot something.
I feel like for every problem, I can find some
sort of a solution. So I'm a real solution based
(22:48):
person and I love trying to figure things out and
I can point and shoot. You know, I'm really good
at saying, Okay, let's do this, this, this, and this,
and then figuring out how to get it done. What
I did? Did you shoot down that ultimately succeeded? Is
there something to remember saying no to something that finally
(23:08):
became a big blockbuster? You know what? It's so funny.
I had this conversation with somebody the other day. I
think it was Emma Greed from Skims. She works with
us on a Good American and she said, remember the
time when somebody wanted to work with Rob in the
back end of it. I think it was Tender the
(23:29):
dating app. And I was like, oh no, he no,
hell no, no dating app. You know this is before
my dating app. What are you talking about? I had
no idea. Then we were talking about it yesterday and
we were laughing, and I said, oh, my gosh, you
know how funny Barry Diller has made many billions of
(23:50):
dollars off of those dating apps. Isn't that crazy that
I just I didn't get it at the time, So,
you know, Mama doesn't always know best, but I try.
I try. You have businesses with actual products, yeah, and
you've done very very well. What about Push? I don't
really know. Posh Phush is a lifestyle platform where Courtney
(24:16):
has really developed this following of people who really want
to get to the bottom of all the amazing products
that she showcases, and she partners with other brands to
shine a big, bright light on things that are good
for the planet and that are a lifestyle of eating
(24:36):
healthy or vegan or gluten free. She is she loves
products that are safe for the environment, and she focuses
in showcases the greatest stuff. It's almost like when I
read everything she talks about and everything she highlights and showcases,
or she has a collab with. She did a collaboration
(24:57):
with vital Protein the call gen powder that you put
in a drink, and they did so well with that.
And then she'll suddenly do something with a light mask
for you know, sort of an anti aging kind of
light mask that I love to put on because she
tells me it's going to make me a hundred years
(25:18):
younger if I keep doing it, So I do it,
and look, she just you're so cute. She comes up
with some of the greatest partnerships and focuses on showcasing
them on her push website. So that's been really fun
and just she has retreats that they'll do that are
(25:38):
sponsored by huge, big blue chip brands, and just focusing
on bringing the awareness of all of this stuff to
the forefront. So, you know, I've been doing a lot
of reading about you and your family, and I just
(26:00):
wanted to touch back. You married, and how old were
you when you married? Robert Kardashian twenty two. I met
him when I was seventeen, almost eighteen. I met him
at the del Mar race track and I was there
with some friends. I wasn't old enough to place a bet,
so I had to stand over to the side of
(26:20):
the you know, people at the betting window. My friends
were betting, and I would give them my three dollars
and they would place a bet for me. He came
up to me and introduced himself, and that's how we met.
So he sort of picked you off, he did at
the race track where I didn't belong betting betting at
the race track. I thought you were a cool girl. Yeah,
(26:40):
we dated and eventually got engaged and got married when
I was twenty two, and I got pregnant on our honeymoon,
and I had Courtney nine months, two weeks and two
days later. And I know that because all the Armenian
ladies were probably counting, so I was no. I promised
I got pregnant on my honeymoon. You know, those are
(27:01):
the days that I'm very old fashioned and right. You
want to be very proper, right then with that big
Armenian family, you bet. So how does it feel when
you're girls are going out and getting pregnant with right
men who are not there or not. Their husbands have evolved,
haven't you, I guess so, you know, I get more
and more understanding, and I get what this generation and
(27:27):
I have so many generations now in my family. I
guess there's such a big age difference. You're embracing what's
happening in the world. You have to, you know. I
think I've been through so many things in my life
that hindsight is very important in my life because I
learned so much along the way that I knew nothing
(27:49):
about before. And I think that I'm very I do.
I embrace what is in front of me, and I
think that I am easy once I under stand it.
You know, it's like with the girls, they could throw
anything at me, and I'm here for them. They know
that there's nothing that I would judge, not at all.
(28:09):
I mean, you just I just never would. The last
thing I want to talk about it in terms of
product is safely. Oh my safely cleaning products means so
much to me. I mean, when I visited your home,
you have an impeccably clean home, sparkling clean. That means
so much coming from you. And by the way, everybody,
(28:29):
it doesn't smell like anything but home. There's no irritating fragrance.
There's no obvious any smells anywhere. It just smells like
a beautiful, clean environment. And that I guess is safely. Well,
it's safely. And we had a fragrance called Rise and
it came in this beautiful it comes in this beautiful
(28:52):
green packaging and yesterday, funny that you should ask, we
came out with a new fragrance in this beautiful, serene
baby baby lavender and some of it's just cream packaging
and it's called Calm and it has a light light
lavender scent. It's the most beautiful scent and the most
(29:17):
beautiful packaging. I actually got a call from Chloe this
morning and she said, Mom, I'm into the calm packaging
And I said, okay, but its way. She goes, this
is what I can get. She goes, this is my aesthetic.
I said, okay, Chloe, it's on its way. So it's
really when you say it. When you say it has
a scent, is that infused into the product. And it's
(29:38):
all plant based. It doesn't have anything bad and it
like parabins and all these other things. But it's really fantastic.
It works like nobody's business. I mean, that's what I'm
so impressed with. We sell it at Walmart exclusively right now,
we have it on get safely dot com, and then
you can get it at Walmart stores across the country
(30:00):
and it's doing really really well there and I'm so
proud and happy about it. But I'm really happy that
the packaging is wonderful. But it really works, and that's
what I've I've used so many products. When Courtney first
started doing Push a few years ago, she was using
some products that she didn't have the mom poush but
(30:21):
in her home, you know, she was trying to teach
me about plant based products and how to be better
for the environment and the planet. And so I was
trying to get on her bandwagon. And I went over
to her house and it just never quite smelled as
clean as I wanted my house to smell. So when
she went on vacation, I went over there with my friend,
(30:43):
these two friends and one of her housekeepers was there,
and we cleaned her entire house with products she would
have been so angry about. It was so funny and
I thought, oh, she'll never smell it. It just made
me feel better to clean her house. I don't know
why I felt like I needed to do that, but
I did. It sounds like me, yeah, right, we're so.
(31:04):
I'm like a lunatic when it comes to stuff like that.
So I was over there with my gloves on and
scrubbing floors and I really was. It's like my favorite
thing to do. And when I finished a week later,
when she came home, she still smelled a really strong,
ammonious smell of what I was using. Now, when I
think about that and I think about what we're making
(31:25):
was safely, it's there's such a difference, but it's a
product that really works so I wanted something that worked
like that but didn't smell like that, so we nailed it.
Congratulations on that. Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited. You are
an extraordinary human being to be able to embrace all
that into and it does not stress, doesn't show on
(31:46):
your face. One ioted idea, well, listen, Chris has such
a lovely face that doesn't show doesn't show stress whatsoever.
And I'm sure sometimes you feel stressed, of course, but
look you look, you look daily, but you cope with
it better than anybody I've met in the last few years. Really,
(32:07):
and truly, you're amazing. Thank you, and I cannot wait
to see what evolves with the new program. I cannot
wait to see what evolves with all your myriad businesses,
because this is really the dynasty of not just the decade,
but of maybe the beginning of the new century. I mean,
it's just incredible what you're doing, and I admire it tremendously.
(32:32):
And I could continue with this talk forever and ever
and ever, but I think we've touched on on so
much and I think there's lots more to talk about,
and maybe in a few months we can have another
conversation here for that, Martha. You know that, and thank
you so much for having me on your show and
this podcast. It's been And you look amazingly beautiful. You
(32:54):
had one of the most beautiful dresses at the met
Ball this year in two you looked amazed than and
I was looking through all the two pictures that I
didn't go to the ball, but I was looking through
the pictures that the New York Times published, and you
stood out more than pretty much anybody that means the world,
(33:14):
that means the world. I had a ball, and I
really did time with my kids. Well great and again
congratulations and we'll talk against so thank you
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