Kourtney Kardashian says E! show 'became a really toxic environment at the end for me'
Kourtney Kardashian shot to fame on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, but the reality star was very ready to say goodbye after 14 years.
"Shooting our show, it became a really toxic environment at the end for me," Kourtney tells Bustle. "I would fight with my sisters. There was, like, just a lot going on. And even for me personally, I wasn't in the happiest place."
The Poosh founder delivered some iconic lines during KUWTK's 20 season run — "Kim, there's people that are dying" — and gifted viewers with hundreds of attitude-filled memes. But Kardashian says she felt like she was playing the role of a reluctant, bitchy sister by the end of the show.
"I felt like I was being almost a character,” she says. "'This is Kourtney, and she's in a bad mood, so even though she was laughing really at lunch, we’re going to cut out the laughing and let's only use the annoying comment that she said.'"
Kourtney was the sibling who had the most hesitation doing the E! show ahead of its 2007 premiere.
"I actually feel uncomfortable being the center of attention. It just makes me nervous," Kourtney admits. Ultimately, she relented.
"At the end of the day, she wanted to be a team player, and she wanted to be supportive of everything that the whole family wanted to do, and she wanted to do it," momager Kris Jenner recalls. "She had had a taste of reality television, and she knew what she was getting herself in, to some extent, and then thought, 'Hey, it couldn’t be that bad if I'm going to do this show with my entire family.'"
Kourtney says KUWTK, which she calls "a therapy journey," made her "really sensitive" at the end.
"Normally I'd have a really good comeback [to insults], like, 'Well, you're covered in cellulite.' But then I would be like, 'I have nothing mean to say. I'm not a bitch anymore, and I just have feelings; like, an abundance of them,'" she explains. "I would just start crying all the time."
In the show's final seasons, it was clear Kourtney was unhappy... which also made sisters Khloe Kardashian and Kim Kardashian unhappy. Kim agreed early on the family would show everything about their lives, but Kourtney didn't want to do that anymore as it "was affecting my happiness."
"So I was like, 'What's more important to everyone? Our happiness or sharing something that isn't going to make me happy?'" she shares.
It couldn't have been all that bad as Kourtney signed up to film Hulu's The Kardashians alongside her famous family again. They all took a break before jumping into production, which Kourtney says "shifted" her "mindset with my sisters."
"When you’re doing that [show] every single day, you don't have the space to take a break and be like, 'Wait, we actually love each other,'" she explains. "There's no one I'd rather spend time with than my sisters."
Even though Kourtney looks just as bitchy in the new Kardashians trailer, she laughs that it's only because she was "super sick" when they shot the promo.
"Workwise, I'm happier than I've ever been," she adds.
The Kardashians hits Hulu on April 14.
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