Having dominated our screens (and lives) for the last 15 years, I think it’s safe to say that the Kardashians are the undisputed queens of reality television.
And with their royal status, of course, comes a level of expertise that few will ever come to understand about the ins and outs of creating TV gold.
Now, during her brand-new Hot Ones interview with Sean Evans, Khloé Kardashian turned up the heat and spilled the tea on all the behind-the-scenes editing fails you may — or may not — have missed.
While making their way through the show’s infamous platter of hot wings, Sean quizzed Khloé on her family’s Hulu show, The Kardashians, and how her years of experience in reality TV have made her pay more attention to detail as a viewer.
“Are there things that you notice — like how the sausage is made, details — when you’re watching, say, the Real Housewives, that the rest of us may miss watching from our couch?” he began.
Khloé — who, along with her mom and sisters, is an executive producer on the show — responded quickly and with certainty. “Definitely,” she said, before pulling back the curtain on the most common editing mishaps she spots as a consumer.
“I can tell when some audio has been put in if they need to reshoot audio, or if a phone call is faked,” she began, giving a little more insight into the editing suite.
And in spite of general assumptions that an editing fail always points to a fabricated setup, Khloé explained that these fixes are more commonly put in place to cover up technical glitches, often to do with sound or lighting.
“It’s not that those things didn’t happen, but sometimes they didn’t catch the audio or sometimes the mics go out,” she said. “I understand that a lot of [the scenes] really might be how it was, but they might just have to redo something or transition to things.”
Interestingly, she went on to discuss viewers’ fascinations with being the first to pick up on these commonplace errors, which often wind up circulating across social media.
“I know that a lot of pages or fan accounts will find— if they see an editing issue, or something like that, it could be super minor, but I’m really aware of those things and I tend to notice that stuff,” she said.
In fact, Khloé’s comments come just days after she and her family found themselves at the center of accusations that they’d faked a number of scenes in the first season of The Kardashians.
Of course, if you’re a longtime fan of the KarJenners, you’ll know that it’s not unusual for the family to be called out over claims that they’ve fabricated certain aspects of their dramatic lives.
However, viewers were left a little more shocked than usual after it seemed that the creators of The Kardashians had forged an entirely fake timeline in a bid to gloss over the events of the Astroworld tragedy in November last year.
In case you need reminding, 10 fans were killed and hundreds more were injured during a crowd surge at Astroworld Festival in Houston late last year. The festival was produced and headlined by Travis Scott, who is the partner of the youngest KarJenner, Kylie.
At the time of the events, it was common knowledge that sisters Kylie and Kendall Jenner had taken Travis and Kylie’s daughter, Stormi, to the festival, and were present in the crowd the night of the tragedy.
And in spite of the fact that the Hulu cameras were rolling on the night — albeit, across the country at Kris Jenner’s birthday dinner — the events of Astroworld were never even mentioned on the show.
What’s more, there was a ton of evidence to suggest that the show’s producers might have faked an entire storyline about Kendall missing her mom’s birthday dinner because of a trip to Miami.
Although Kendall never explicitly said that she was in Miami the night of her mom’s birthday, it was heavily implied throughout the episode that that’s where she was — despite it being known that Kris’s dinner party took place on the same night as Astroworld, when Kendall was in Houston.
While it was generally agreed among fans that it would have been wrong for the family to exploit the Astroworld tragedy for a storyline, many viewers felt it was disrespectful that they didn’t at least include a tribute to the victims.
And that wasn’t the only time the show’s producers were accused of creating their own reality.
In the Season 1 finale episode last week, some viewers were quick to notice that a family meeting about Khloé and Tristan Thompson’s paternity scandal looked to have been shot weeks after the events actually unfolded.
So, after Tristan was shockingly exposed for cheating on Khloé for a third time, Kim immediately called for a family meeting. In the next scene, we saw Kim, Kourtney, Kris Jenner, and Corey Gamble sitting around a dining table looking downcast and discussing how best to support Khloé during such a difficult time.
And despite the fact that it was heavily implied that this meeting took place in the immediate aftermath of the cheating scandal sometime in December, a few eagle-eyed internet sleuths were able to deduce that the scene was actually shot in late January.
Paparazzi shots of Kourtney wearing the exact same outfit, hair, makeup, and nail design on Jan. 31 were the ultimate giveaway, putting the show’s creators in the firing line for the second time that season.
But if there’s anything to be learned from Khloé’s new insight, it’s that edits like these are often made for a good reason — and that’s the magic of reality TV.
