After they catapulted to fame in 2007, the Kardashian sisters documented the ups and downs of their lives on their family reality show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
The cameras caught some of the women’s most vulnerable moments over the years — from weddings to breakups to giving birth and everything in between.
The family’s raw reaction to Caitlyn Jenner publicly coming out as a trans woman in 2015 was filmed for a special episode, and so was Kim Kardashian’s emotional retelling of being robbed at gunpoint in 2016.
In theory, the family have a no-holds-barred approach to documenting their lives for their fans’ viewing pleasure, but it has become clear over the years that some of the sisters are willing to share more than others.
In fact, eldest sister Kourtney Kardashian’s reluctance to give up her life to the cameras ironically became a central plot point in Keeping Up starting in 2017, and even led to a physical fight between her and Kim.
At the time, Kourtney argued that she wanted to spend more time with her children and traveling instead of fulfilling filming commitments, and in one episode she was confronted by the entire production team for not putting in enough hours.
It was later revealed that she’d be taking an indefinite break from the show, but was back full time after just three months away.
In 2019, Khloé Kardashian addressed the different work expectations that each family member faced as she confirmed that her younger sisters, Kendall and Kylie Jenner, had different contracts that allowed them to film less content.
A fan tweeted, “This ain’t shade AT ALL but do Kendall and Kylie have different contracts now for #KUWTK? cos Kendall rarely films and Kylie isn’t featured a whole lot? 👀” And Khloé replied, “Kendall and Kylie have different contracts. Kourt, Kim and I have an equal contract.”
Kendall and Kylie have different contracts. Kourt, Kim and I have an equal contract. https://t.co/Ww3a65YFId
So this explained why she and Kim felt more shortchanged by Kourtney than the Jenner sisters, because she was contractually obliged to provide more content than she was giving — and this meant that Khloé and Kim had to pick up the slack.
In a 2019 episode of Keeping Up, Kim said: “Our job is being open and honest and sharing a lot of ourselves, and it just seems like, for the past few years now, Kourtney hasn’t really been open about her personal life on camera.”
“So, all of the days that Kourtney isn’t filming, Khloé and I are picking up the slack and are having to share more,” Kim went on. “Because if we’re not sharing our lives, then what is the show?”
And during a heated on-camera argument at around the same time, Khloé told Kourtney that it’s their “job” to film their lives for the show, adding: “You don’t give anything, you coast. You think it’s fair that you just coast through life?”
Keeping Up aired its final season last year, with the family quickly signing a deal with Hulu for a new reality show, The Kardashians, which premiered in April.
Ahead of its launch, Kourtney insisted that having some time away from filming had led to a shift in her approach to sharing her life onscreen, and Season 1 proved her to be true to her word as her romance with Travis Barker took center stage throughout the series.
But when it came to more difficult subject matters, there appeared to be just one sister bearing the brunt of providing viewers with some drama as Khloé’s raw reaction to finding out that her partner, Tristan Thompson, had fathered a child with another woman became the focus of the emotionally charged season finale.
Speaking to Variety back in March, Khloé admitted that she would have preferred not to have had the difficult situation play out on the show, but she felt like she had to include it to be true to life.
“I wish I never had to talk about that because it’s not a fun thing to talk about,” she explained at the time. “But it is part of my journey in life, so we will see it on the show.”
Khloé also revealed that the entire family were on the same salary for The Kardashians and were considered to be “equals” as they are each expected to “give so much of our personal lives up for entertainment.”
However, a new trailer for Season 2 of the show — which premieres on Thursday — has left some fans concerned that Khloé is expected to share her lowest points with viewers while her sisters, especially Kim, are able to bury their own hardships.
The teaser, which was released on Tuesday, revealed that the special premiere episode will once again focus on Khloé’s tumultuous relationship with Tristan.
In July, it was revealed that Khloé and Tristan were having a second baby together via surrogate, and it was later confirmed that the surrogate got pregnant just weeks before Khloé learned of his paternity scandal.
It later transpired that Tristan was encouraging personal trainer Maralee Nichols to have an abortion while simultaneously pushing ahead with surrogacy with Khloé.
Tristan did not tell Khloé that he’d gotten another woman pregnant and managed to keep it a secret from her until just before the baby’s birth when his legal declaration was leaked to the press.
As a result, Khloé learned about Maralee “with the rest of the world,” and once she was already expecting her second child with Tristan.
And it has now been confirmed that Khloé will address all of this in The Kardashians’ Season 2 launch, and her heartbreak is palpable in the new trailer.
“Tristan and I are having another baby, and it’s supposed to be a really exciting time and it’s just a different experience,” Khloé says in a confessional, with her voice audibly cracking from the emotion.
“This has been a difficult time in my life,” she goes on. “But it’s the start of something positive and happy and beautiful.”
While fans heaped praise on Khloé for being so open on the show and shared their excitement to watch exactly what went down behind the scenes with Tristan, they couldn’t help but think that she had pulled the short straw.
Discussing the new trailer on a Reddit forum, some pointed out that Kim had also been through hardship in recent months but there has been no hint that any of it will be addressed on the show.
In case you forgot, Kim was repeatedly targeted and “harassed” by her ex-husband Kanye West earlier this year in a series of concerning Instagram posts. She also split from her boyfriend Pete Davidson in August after a nine-month romance.
“Watch Khloe have to share all this while Kim gets to sweep her entire relationship with Pete under the rug,” one fan wrote on the forum.
“THIS,” a second agreed. “Kim barely shared anything difficult or negative about her situation with Kanye and probably won't even speak on Pete.”
“She should be the LAST one to tell others to share more about their relationships and to be an ‘open book’, because in actuality she's the one that shares the LEAST and hides behind the ‘privacy’ excuse only when it's convenient to her," they went on.
“I’ll actually be mad if Khloe has to expose everything and Kim gets the privilege of privacy,” one more person echoed.
Another user wrote: “I totally agree. I feel for Khloe and I don't understand why she's always the one having to share everything [now] that they have more control over the show.”
The other trailers for Season 2 have certainly supported this discourse, with Kim’s experience with Ye and split from Pete yet to be referenced.
But some of the things that we do have to look forward to include Kourtney and Travis’s wedding, Kylie’s struggle after giving birth to her son in February, and Kim’s reaction to the backlash that her Variety interview caused, where she claimed that “nobody wants to work these days.”
And of course there is still every chance that plenty of other drama will play out in the show that hasn’t been featured in the trailers, which means that Kim could end up sharing more about Ye and Pete than we are anticipating.
