The Kardashians is back on our screens!
Season 3 of the hit Hulu show premiered last night, and its first episode was full of drama.
This season began filming last September, which is when, as you might recall, Kim Kardashian and her ex-husband Kanye West began feuding on Instagram again.
For those who need a quick refresher, Kanye, who legally changed his name to Ye, spent the early months of last year targeting Kim and her then-boyfriend, Pete Davidson, in several now-deleted Instagram posts after expressing his disapproval of their relationship.
Not only did Ye slam Kim’s parenting style and accuse her of “playing games” with their four kids — North, Saint, Chicago, and Psalm — but he also incited a flurry of hate toward Pete, even going so far as to depict a cartoonlike version of himself kidnapping and decapitating a figure resembling the comedian in a disturbing music video.
The feud between Kim, Pete, and Ye seemed to die down by mid-March, when Ye was suspended from Instagram. But when August rolled around, the artist began attacking Kim once again in a series of new posts.
After news broke that Kim and Pete had parted ways, Ye announced that he wanted to take “control” over his kids — specifically noting that he wanted them to transfer from their current school to Donda Academy, which is the private Christian school he owns.
Ye then leaked a private text message he’d received from Kim, in which she begged him to “please stop” posting on Instagram. He wrote back, “No. We need to talk in person. You don’t have say so of where the kids go to school. Why you get say say. Cause you half white?”
And Ye then accused Kim’s mom, Kris Jenner, of encouraging his and Kim’s then–4- and 9-year-old daughters, Chicago and North, to appear in “playboy and sex tapes.”
“Don’t let Kris make you do playboy like she made Kyle [Kylie Jenner] and Kim do,” he wrote, referring to Kim’s infamous 2007 sex tape with Ray J. The same year that the tape was released, Kris heavily encouraged Kim to pose nude for Playboy in a now-viral episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
“Hollywood is a giant brothel,” Ye continued. “Pornography destroyed my family. I deal with the addiction. Instagram promotes it. Not gonna let it happen to Northy and Chicago.”
Ye then shared a text that Kim had written on Kris’s behalf — and it was pretty clear that the pair were exasperated.
“From my mom- PLEASE Tell him to please stop mentioning my name,” said Kris via Kim. “I’m almost 67 years old and I don’t always feel great and this stresses me to no end.” Ye replied, “Y’all don’t have so so over my black children and where they go to school. They will not do playboy and sex tapes. Tell your Clinton friends to come get me. I’m here.”
At the time, and throughout Season 2 of The Kardashians, Kim hardly addressed Ye’s attacks, instead choosing to lay low for the sake of their kids.
But now Season 3 of the Hulu show has given us some real insight into how she was actually coping.
As expected, Kim was super frustrated behind the scenes — to the point where her psoriasis flared up all over her legs. Psoriasis is an autoimmune condition that both Kim and Kris deal with, which causes inflammation in the body.
When Kris tells her that the flare-up was a result of her being “stressed out,” Kim sarcastically replies, “Well, tell the father of my children to stop acting up and then I won’t stress out and get psoriasis!”
Later on, we learn that Kim was having anxiety attacks as a result of the stress too.
“I spent my whole morning having an anxiety attack,” she tells Kris. “I felt like I just couldn’t breathe all day.”
Then, in a confessional, Kim elaborates on the attacks from Ye. “There’s been a lot going on with Kanye right now,” she says as screenshots of news articles about the leaked messages pop up on the screen.
“Even through all of the craziness of everything that Kanye says about us, I never comment. I never post,” she continues.
“He has made up the most insane narrative about you and the tape,” she says to Kris. “We stay silent, we stay silent. Through all the lies, all the stuff.”
Going on to address the leaked texts, Kim sadly reveals that she’d already anticipated that “everything” she texted Ye would end up online, given that this wasn’t the first time he’d made their private messages public.
“I think at this point, I just assume that everything I text Kanye is gonna be put on the internet,” she says.
“I think I can handle anything, I just get really heartbroken for my mom — that she has to deal with so much,” she continues.
Kris then offers a word of advice to Kim, reminding her that she “can’t control” Ye or his actions.
“You can’t control somebody else. He’s doing this to himself,” she says.
Then Kim turns her attention to Ye’s comments about her sex tape.
“Even just how he looks down on me for my tape and brings it up all over town, all over the media. Like, thanks for reminding people once again,” she says.
“All of his shenanigans — I don’t even know what the fuck to call it — is gonna be far more damaging to the kids one day than my tape will ever be,” she adds.
As Kim opens up about Ye’s behavior and the frustrating choice to remain silent for the sake of her kids, she breaks down in tears.
“I have to sit here and not say anything ever because I know one day my kids will appreciate that,” she says.
“Shit could be going down, and I get in the car, and ... the kids wanna blast Dad’s music. And I’m like, ‘He’s like best! Yeah!’ And I put it on, and we’re singing along, and inside I’m dying,” she says.
“I will be his biggest cheerleader to them forever, and one day they’ll see for themselves," she continues. "I’ll answer whatever they want me to.”
“The one that was supposed to protect me — and still does interviews saying they’ll be my forever protector — is the one that is hurting me the most,” she adds, noting that she’s “fucking exhausted” by it all.
What’s more, Kim calls out Ye for sometimes asking her for “approval” over what she says about him on the show, despite the fact that he’s openly talked about her in many of his own songs and interviews without warning.
“Sometimes Kanye will say to me, ‘Can I have approval over what you say about me on your show?’” Kim shares.
“And I'll say, ‘Well, you just talked about me in this song, this song, this interview, this interview, and you didn’t ask my permission,’” she continues.
“And I never say anything bad, I never say anything negative. If I say I’m exhausted, I feel guilty about that,” she adds, seemingly referring to her brief comments from last season where she expressed how tired she was of Ye’s attacks and said she couldn’t “take it anymore.”
