Kim Kardashian‘s emotional conversation about Kanye West concluded on Thursday’s new episode of The Kardashians. As she spoke with mom Kris Jenner about her ex-husband’s public rants, many of which targeted her famous family, Kardashian invoked a line from her and West’s feud with Taylor Swift.
“I don’t want to be a part of this narrative,” Kardashian explained. (Swift famously asked to be “excluded from this narrative” in 2016 amid her war with the superstars.) Last week, the Skims co-founder said she had an “anxiety attack” over West’s Instagram messages that targeted both her and her mom. The posts appeared to be from September 2022 when he brought up Kardashian’s sex tape, accused her of having an affair with Drake and slammed his former mother-in-law.
“When is this ever going to end? It never will and I’m stuck with this for the rest of my life,” Kardashian cried as she told Jenner she is “so overwhelmed.”
“You can’t control somebody else, you know, he’s doing this to himself,” Jenner shared.
“But it affects my kids,” Kim interjected.
“Of course it does, that’s the tragic part of the whole story,” Jenner added.
In her confessional, Kardashian cried again: “I still feel the need to, like, not talk about it and protect it for my kids and I always will feel that way, but, like, God if people knew. I just would never do that to my kids. It just is really crazy.”
As she spoke with her mom, Kardashian revealed just how much damage control she used to do for her ex-husband, whom she wed in 2014. (Kardashian filed for divorce in 2021 and it was settled last year.)
“And sometimes I feel if he were to hit rock bottom, that’s his journey that he needs to figure out on his own. I used to run around and call everyone behind his back and be like, ‘It’s going to be OK… just give him another chance.’ I used to spend hours, and hours, and hours of my days as the cleanup crew,” Kardashian lamented. “I just don’t have that energy.”
“Well, that’s why you got divorced because you can’t do that to yourself anymore,” Jenner stated. “You never deserve to live like that.”
Kardashian called it the “hardest feeling” to watch West, someone she “really loved,” be “so different” than the person she knew.
Jenner empathized with her daughter and she can’t imagine “trying to explain this” to 9-year-old North West. “North, who I’m sure is hearing something and maybe she won’t say it,” the matriarch said. “That’s what breaks my heart.”
“She actually doesn’t know and that’s what’s so crazy,” Kardashian replied.
“Really?” Jenner asked.
“When stuff is said, it’s a chain to my whole household, ‘No TV, only Apple TV,'” Kardashian explained, saying she doesn’t want to risk her and West’s four children seeing a story about him on the news.
“I have to figure out a way to, like, protect and so they still haven’t seen anything,” Kardashian continued, adding that she goes “into crisis mode.”
“I am the one being accused for so many things, and blamed for so many things and it really, really is hurtful and it sucks, but I can control how I react,” Kardashian said in her confessional. “I really do believe in my soul that one day my kids will appreciate my silence, my understanding and my grace. I will try my hardest to keep it together at all times.”
The conversation appeared to be filmed before West’s White Lives Matter fashion show and multiple antisemitic statements. It’s unclear how that will play out this season.
New episodes of The Kardashians drop every Thursday on Hulu.
