According to eyewitnesses, Blac Chyna was reduced to tears in court on Thursday after being shown nude photographs of herself, which were leaked online by her ex-partner Rob Kardashian in 2017.
In case you’re not aware, Chyna — whose legal name is Angela White — is currently embroiled in a courtroom battle with the Kardashian family, who she claims conspired to cancel her and Rob’s reality show, Rob & Chyna, which aired for just one season in 2016.
For some context, Chyna and Rob — who is the lone son and fourth child of Kris Jenner and Robert Kardashian Sr. — had a brief but tumultuous relationship over the course of 2016.
During the eight months they were together, Rob and Chyna got engaged and announced a pregnancy. They welcomed a daughter, Dream Kardashian, after their eventual split later that year.
The couple’s short-lived reality TV show aired on E!, the same channel as Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Its premiere coincided with the month of their breakup in September 2016.
The first installment of Rob & Chyna rated highly, with roughly 1.4 million viewers tuning in to chart their whirlwind romance from the start. However, as their relationship crumbled in real time, so too did the show’s ratings, as viewership dropped below 1 million in the later episodes.
Soon after it was announced that the show would not be returning, Rob posted a string of nude photos of Chyna on social media as their relationship continued to publicly unravel. Rob faced intense backlash as a result and was accused by Chyna’s attorney of not only violating California’s law on the nonconsensual sharing of sexual images, but also affronting women’s rights.
After her explicit images were leaked, Chyna was prompted to obtain a restraining order against Rob in July 2017.
During proceedings for a separate legal filing that Rob leveled against Chyna — which has since been dropped — the Kardashians claimed that the cancelation of Rob & Chyna had been a mutual decision between E! and the family.
However, Chyna soon hit back in a lawsuit of her own, blaming them for “killing her hit television show” when filming for a second season had already commenced. She said that the Kardashian family turned on her after the breakup and accused them of “slut-shaming her on social media.”
Now, more than four years later, it is this 2017 lawsuit that is currently playing out in court, following an announcement earlier this month that Chyna was planning to “re-focus” her attention on the trial.
In a statement on April 2, Chyna doubled down on claims made in the original suit, alleging that Kris Jenner and three of her five daughters — Kim and Khloé Kardashian and Kylie Jenner — had “killed” her show.
Chyna claims that the cancelation of Rob & Chyna — for which she was paid $92,500 per episode — caused huge financial losses that impacted her two kids: 5-year-old Dream, who she shares with Rob, and 9-year-old King Cairo, who she shares with her ex Tyga.
On April 18, the legal battle officially got underway, with Chyna seeking what is estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from the family.
When Chyna took to the witness stand in front of a jury on the third day of proceedings, she was asked to discuss the restraining order that she took out against Rob in 2017 after he shared her nude images.
Back when Chyna first filed the complaint against the Kardashians accusing them of “killing” Rob & Chyna, the family used the restraining order as evidence to argue that the case should be dismissed. They claimed that a second season of the show would have been impossible to make, given that Chyna and Rob couldn’t film together or contact one another, as per the restraining order.
Revisiting this line of questioning, the Kardashians’ attorney, Michael Rhodes, presented Chyna with a binder containing the nude images of her that Rob leaked — including one of her exposed genital area.
The images were not shown to the jury or anyone else present, but it was evident to those in attendance — including the Kardashian family — that being shown the images was difficult for Chyna to bear.
Overcome with emotion, Entertainment Tonight reported that Chyna requested a break in proceedings and looked “visibly shaken” as she left the room to be consoled by a friend.
“Once she left the courtroom, Chyna was seen crying and visibly shaken after seeing the photos of herself naked in the binder,” the eyewitness said. “She was being consoled by her male friend as she walked into a private room at the courthouse.”
Elsewhere in her testimony, Chyna was also asked by Rhodes if the press conference she held to announce the restraining order — and a subsequent appearance on Good Morning America — was a publicity stunt.
This question prompted an impassioned response from Chyna, who claimed that the court order was “the only way” she could respond to Rob nonconsensually posting sexual images of her.
“You think I'm supposed to not let anything happen? Rob posted nudes of me on the internet. Do you want me to not do anything? Am I to not do anything and just take it, right?” she said.
“It was the only way I could stop him from posting pictures of me on the internet,” she added.
At this point, Chyna became “visibly upset,” shedding tears at the witness stand. When asked why she was crying, she said that the binder containing her nude photographs was the reason.
ET reported that Kris, Kim, and Khloé watched on as Chyna broke down. Kylie — who had been present in court previously — did not attend on Thursday due to reported sickness.
