Kim Kardashian Opens Up About Why She Addressed Her Ray J Sex Tape Scandal On KUWTK
As many of us already know, “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” will be coming to an end this year. As the show nears its conclusion, Kim and the show’s producers has decided to open up about the decision to address her big sex tape on the very first episode in 2007.
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As PEOPLE points out, during that episode, Kourtney Kardashian helped Kim prepare for an appearance on The Tyra Banks Show. When she asked her sister why she made the tape with singer Ray J, Kim simply replied, “Because I was horny and I felt like it.”
Now, in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, the 40-year-old explained that she brought it up in KUWTK because she wanted to be transparent with her viewers and had no plans to “hold back” on anything. She said: “I do think that, obviously, as producers, I’m sure they loved it,” she said. “And loved [us] wanting to talk about the elephant in the room. And I probably wouldn’t have, unless it was for the show. Sometimes I feel like, ‘OK, I know I should probably deal and get this over with. Someone’s gonna ask me, so I might as well just go ahead and do it.'” The KKW Beauty mogul went on to explain, “In a way, filming has helped us deal with things, instead of sweeping them under the rug. At the end of the day, I was always open and honest and wanted to share whatever I was going through. I wasn’t gonna hold back.” To add, the show’s producer at the time, Lisa Berger made it clear that the infamous sex tape was not the inspiration behind the series:
“I think everyone’s like, ‘The sex tape made the show happen.’ It was so not about that at all,” Lisa Berger, who at the time was the executive vice president of original programming and series development at E!, Berger explained to the LA Times.
Executive producer Farnaz Farjam went on to recall “Kim being conflicted about it, because she hated everything that was going on around that tape. We all talked about, ‘We just have to own all the controversy around this family’ and jumped in with both feet in the first episode. Then, the audience can get to know them at a much deeper level than what’s been tabloid headlines.”
Despite what many thought about the big move to kick off the show, Eliot Goldberg, the senior vice president of production and development at Ryan Seacrest Productions, believed that it was just “brilliant” for Kim to discuss the tape right away: “They knew they had to deal with the sex tape,” he said. “It was really brilliant that if they dealt with it right at the top, and put it to bed, the world, and them, could move on.”
After a decade of filming, the family announced last September that the 20th season of KUWTK would be the last.
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