It’s no secret that Kim Kardashian and Kourtney Kardashian have had a rocky relationship over the years, with the tension between the two even culminating in a physical fight back in 2020.
While things haven’t quite reached that level since, the sisters often face speculation that they are at loggerheads.
In January, the Sun US reported that Kim and Kourtney are “always feuding with each other. They're always at each other's throats.”
And when Kourtney’s wedding special episode of The Kardashians aired back in April, viewers were convinced that it contained further evidence that she is still feuding with Kim.
The bonus episode featured previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage from Kourtney’s three weddings to Travis Barker last year. The main event was a stunning celebration in Italy, where they were joined by their friends and family for a weekend of festivities.
Within hours of the special premiering, a viral TikTok had broken down all of the “awkward moments” between Kim and Kourtney, which started as soon as Kim arrived in Italy with her 9-year-old daughter, North.
Kourtney and Travis were waiting on a super yacht to greet their loved ones, and as Kim, North, and Kendall Jenner boarded she appeared to noticeably snub Kim. While Kim looked like she was reaching out to hug her big sister, Kourtney leaned in to hug her niece instead, followed by Kendall. She didn’t acknowledge Kim in any way.
Later, as Kourtney was preparing to walk down the aisle, she seemed disinterested as Kim tried to offer words of advice by detailing what she had learned from her own wedding. Kourtney was filmed cutting her off before they posed for a “very awkward picture together” that left visible space between them.
Finally, Kourtney was accused of looking like she wasn’t paying attention as Kim gave a speech during her wedding reception. At the time, it was speculated that Kourtney was wary of her younger sister stealing her limelight.
One person commented: “I feel like kourtney was like *were not going to make this about Kim* like Kim had a lot of scenes cut off.”
And this week’s episode of The Kardashians has now confirmed that there was tension between Kim and Kourtney on Kourtney’s wedding day. However, this apparently stemmed from Kim refusing to enjoy the event.
In an emotional scene, Kourtney said to Kendall that all of her friends had noticed Kim’s strange behavior throughout the trip and told her that it seemed like her sister was “spiraling.”
The conversation with Kourtney explaining to Kendall that she was upset by Kim’s decision to work with Dolce & Gabbana just four months after the wedding. In September, Kim served as a creative director for a limited collection inspired by the brand's most iconic archival pieces from 1987 to 2007.
This was hurtful to Kourtney because she’d collaborated with the same designers for her big day, and she’d felt “special” that they had opened their ‘90s archive for her and her guests at the time.
“This isn’t really even about business for me, it’s just like, this was my wedding,” she said. “While we were at our wedding Kim was having these conversations with Dolce that I didn’t know about.”
Kourtney said that Kim had initially told her that she was doing a Skims collaboration with the brand, but she later casually mentioned in a phone call that Skims was no longer involved.
Kourtney then broke down in tears as she shared: “I feel like there’s such an abundance of opportunities. It’s not about business, there’s just so much and it takes precedence over hurting your sister. It’s legit copying my wedding, like, everything that I did was pulling references of '90s…”
“It’s just stupid because it’s the deeper thing that it’s about,” she went on. “Grabbing whatever’s in the way. It’s such an abundance, an excess, it’s never enough. It’s never just OK to not do something or turn something down because it doesn’t make sense.”
Kourtney then said of Kim: “She wasn’t happy at my wedding. Everyone else was like: ‘Woah, this is amazing, we’re having the best time.’ She can never give acknowledgement of: ‘Woah this is so amazing, I love this whole vibe, do you mind?’ or ‘how do you feel about me doing this?’”
“I think she sees everything that I had there and takes it for her own and she doesn’t even see it, she sees the dollar signs,” she theorized. “But to me, I see it and I see, like, ‘oh, you were there, you weren’t happy.’”
“Everyone said something to me,” Kourtney told Kendall. “All my friends, they were all like: ‘She’s spiraling.’”
Kendall agreed that the situation hadn’t been handled fairly as Kourtney explained in more detail why she was so bothered.
“To me, it was more personal. I think that’s why it hurts my feelings, it was my actual wedding,” she said. “The year your sister got married you then made a deal to do this fashion show? Don’t do it the same year, that comes out four months later.”
“It’s not like I did their campaign and then she did the campaign right after, like, who cares? That’s business,” Kourtney added. “It’s my actual wedding and that wasn’t a business deal to me because it felt really personal.”
Fans had noticed that Kourtney did not support Kim’s huge moment in Milan in September, and Kourtney revealed in the episode that this was because it felt “really unauthentic” to her and she couldn’t “fake it.”
“I don’t feel like supporting this,” she said. Kendall agreed that the similarities between Kim’s collab with Dolce & Gabbana and Kourtney’s wedding “deflates” how “special” Kourtney had felt “in the moment.”
Kourtney acknowledged that this is exactly why she usually tries to keep her distance from her family and do her own thing, adding of Kim: “I think she’s really driven and doesn’t know what’s driving her. If you don’t know what’s driving you I think it’s definitely hard to feel what are you doing it all for?”
The cameras also caught Kim’s reaction to Kourtney’s upset, with Khloé Kardashian the one to break the news as she and their mom, Kris Jenner, flew out to Milan to support Kim.
Kim was visibly shocked that Kourtney was mad at her, despite suggesting earlier this season that she anticipated that Kourtney wouldn’t be happy with the collab. She also defended the deal by saying that she’d been “mindful” of stepping on Kourtney’s toes, and even tried to push the show back a year.
“This is the first time I heard that Kourtney is upset about us doing the Dolce show,” she said in a confessional. “And I couldn’t have been more mindful; I said don’t do the Madonna collection, don’t do the lace collection, don’t do anything that Kourtney wore to her wedding out of respect for Kourtney."
“She doesn’t know that I have the email string begging them to push it a year,” Kim added. “What I’ve realized in this lifetime is everyone has their own truth of how they think something happened. And it’s weird, but it’s all gonna come out in the show. This is our therapy.”
The tension in Kim and Kourtney’s relationship can be traced back to 2017, when Kourtney drastically reduced how much time she spent filming for Keeping Up With The Kardashians in order to spend more time with her children.
This came after years of the star sharing some of the most intimate moments of her life on screen; including giving birth and her rocky romance with Scott Disick.
Still, her decision did not go down well with her sister. Kim started to regularly accuse Kourtney of having a bad work ethic, and things came to a head during a particularly dramatic episode of the show three years later.
Kourtney took offense after Kim made the loaded comment that Kris is used to her and Khloé going to work on their “death beds.” She retorted: “You act like I don’t do shit, you have this narrative in your mind. I will literally fuck you up if you mention it again. Literally, shut the fuck up! Change the narrative in your mind! I work my fucking ass off.”
“But also, if I didn't want to work my ass off, and I did want to be a stay-at-home mom, that's fucking fine, you literal fucking cunt,” Kourtney added as she threw a water bottle at Kim and lunged at her.
Khloé desperately tried to break up the messy physical fight, and Kourtney later broke down in tears as she said that filming with her sisters was “torture.”
After Keeping Up ended the following year, Kourtney said that it had been a “toxic” environment for her and she appeared to be in a better place when the family landed their new series with Hulu.
