16 Strict Rules The Kardashians Have To Follow While Filming Their Show
There's a lot to keep up with.
Instagram / Hulu "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" had an excellent 20-season run, and, as you'd imagine, the show ran a tight ship thanks to Kris Jenner's hard work and fast thinking.
While "KUWTK" is all about giving a genuine, authentic, and gritty look at their family, plenty of rules must be followed when filming. Anything from non-disclosure agreements to precise beauty and lighting conditions to an outrageous pay scale.
The Kardashians don't typically discuss what goes on behind the scenes of their show, and there are some bizarre rules and off-camera secrets you can find on the internet. That said, get ready for a list of strange restrictions that Kim, Kourtney, Khloé, Kendall, Kylie, and Kris—and anybody else who wants to be on the show—must strictly adhere to.
Here are the rules the Kardashians must follow while filming their TV show.
1. Everyone has to sign an NDA.
Kim confirmed this on Twitter in September 2019 while live-tweeting an episode, writing, "Btw NDA'S for all!!!! #KUWTK."
At the height of Blac Chyna and Rob Kardashian's dispute in July 2017, Buzzfeed News reported that ABC News received a photo of the NDA Chyna signed in 2016. In the document, "she agreed not to disclose anything about anyone in the Kardashian family."
A source from Who Magazine also commented on the pressures to sign NDA's in the presence of the Kardashian family—namely Kim.
They claim that the reality star is "so paranoid" about keeping her personal life under wraps that "she's taken to forcing girlfriends into signing non-disclosure agreements before even agreeing to go on coffee dates with them."
"Kim's not very popular with a lot of her kids' friends' moms, because she's so paranoid about even having a basic conversation with them," the source continues.
"She swaggers around like she's royalty and when she does make a new acquaintance the first thing she makes them do is sign an iron-clad agreement that prohibits them from discussing anything about her at all. It's so over the top and even [husband] Kanye Opens a New Window. thinks she's acting weird—which says a lot!"
2. The show can't use your picture if they don't sign a waiver.
Cosmopolitan Magazine revealed that during the airing of Season 16 of KUWTK, the show aired blurred pictures of Khloé's then-boyfriend Tristan Thompson. Fans were perplexed by the blurred photos and took to Twitter to ask the reality star what was happening.
Khloé appeared to be as surprised as everyone else, tweeting, "Wait? It is!?!?? I did not even notice that. I don't know #KUWTK well, you obviously know who it is LOL so I don't know what the point of that is. I'll find out."
In the end, Thompson simply may not have signed a waiver authorizing the use of his photograph on the show.
"We obviously didn't do anything," Khloé wrote. "He might not have signed a waiver to show those images. Why would I want to blur his face? I'm not hiding his identity LOL."
3. Kylie and Kendall have to get weekly manicures.
In an interview with Elle Magazine, when asked about her "extreme nails" and how she deals with their length, she revealed, "I get them done once a week, which isn't normal."
Kendall went on to add, "[Kris] would make us do it. She would have a nail artist come to the house once a week and she would make us get our nails done. She was like 'You are never going to look like you're not put together.' So we were always getting them done."
Kendall claims only to do her nails for photoshoots, but Kylie decided to take her mom's advice.
4. What Kim says goes.
Kim is for the drama, as we all know.
While speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Kardashian admitted to even telling the crew when something big is happening with a family member, claiming she knows "what fans want to see."
"I think if you ask the crew, I probably produce the most, because I know what my sisters might not be sharing. So I'll tell them, 'Go over to Kourt's house right now. Something is going on.'"
5. You have to be trustworthy to be on the show.
In Season 15 of KUWTK, a pregnant Kylie Jenner called her mother, Kris Jenner, to report that she believed an employee was attempting to photograph her in her own house.
Something that would be valuable considering she had never publicly confirmed she was expecting before announcing the birth of her daughter, Stormi, on February 1.
Kris Jenner revealed to The HuffPost that she had "thought about getting the employee arrested."
"Unfortunately, there are some bad people out there who have not good intentions. And, you know, I obviously can't control that," she said. "But to the best of my ability, we try to have people on our team who have our back, who we feel that we can really trust."
While discussing what it takes to get on the Kardashian payroll, "It's about being discreet and being private and learning. That's definitely a skill set," she said.
"And being able to be mature and understand what the family is all about. If somebody has something that's happening in your life at the moment and it is a private thing, then somebody [would need] to have a lot of respect for that."
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"We obviously will go to and spare [raises voice] no expense to hold somebody accountable if that happens on our team," she continues.
"I don't care how much money somebody might have―if they have nothing. Some people think, 'Oh, I don't have any money, and they're not going to sue me.' Well, we'll take payments," she laughed.
"We'll garner those wages for, you know, the next 10 years. But I just think that people don't think," she added. "It's a foolish thing to do."
It sounds like it's a good idea not to get on their bad side, or you'll have the entire Kardashian clan after you.
6. The exterior of their homes can't be filmed.
Kim spoke out about filming KUWTK in a "fake" house.
In 2014 it was revealed that the outside of Jenner's house seen on the reality show was not the family's real home.
Eventually, Kim disclosed that she, too, had a different home exterior shown for the show.
"When we film inside, that's obviously our real home," Kim explained, adding that the exterior was altered for "safety reasons."
"My old home in Beverly Hills was really my home & I would get people showing up at all hours ringing my gate & had to call the police on several occasions. People hopping the gate & scaring me. It was so unsafe. The Hollywood star tours would stop by too, [because] they recognized my home from our show."
"After that, we realized how unsafe it is to show the exterior of our homes. So now we use different homes for the outside for security purposes."
The Daily Mail shares that the houses filmed are only 20 miles away from their actual homes to ensure the family is extra safe. But don't worry, the insides of their homes are legit, so not everything was a lie.
7. If she doesn't like footage, Kris Jenner can "nix" it.
Kris maintains complete creative control over the show, according to an OK! Magazine insider, she is the only family member with access to the taped footage: "There are no exceptions, and she can nix anything she doesn't like," reveals the source.
Kris has been known to delete footage she finds unflattering and even admitted as much to The Hollywood Reporter.
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"I mean, believe me, I'm not going to lie, there's been times when I've walked away from the camera and I've got a big bump in my hair and I'm like 'Take that out, my hair looks like shit.' I'm too vain to leave really ugly, ugly angles in," she said.
It makes sense since an insider from RadarOnline reveals that "the staff pretty much lives at Kris's house."
"She likes to have them there all the time because she is always coming up with new ideas—and no one will defy her because she'll just fire them."
But she also has the power to kick them out of the house, like when she wanted to have sex with her boyfriend, Cory Gamble.
8. They can also edit the show if things get a bit too emotional.
Being open with the public was difficult, and out of all the Kardashians, Kourtney had the most considerable resistance to the microphones and cameras.
She told The Hollywood Reporter, “I remember in season one being like, ‘I have to go [to] the bathroom,’ and I’d cry in there as quietly as I could because I was still mic’d. I never want to cry in front of cameras.”
They also had to be willing to discuss complex topics such as divorce. Kim went through a tough time during her divorce from ex-husband Kanye West, but she tackled it head-on and eventually shared what went down with them during the show’s final season.
But if things did happen to get too emotional, they were allowed to edit certain parts out. Kim told The Hollywood Reporter that Caitlyn’s transition was really hard for Kris and Khloé.
“We never really edited content before, but we did edit a bit of Khloé’s reaction just because she was so upset.”
9. Kanye doesn’t have to film.
While everyone else may have had to follow the rules, it was a completely different story for Kanye. Before the couple’s split, Kim told The Hollywood Reporter that Kanye wasn’t too keen on filming.
“Kanye was like, ‘I’m not a part of the show. That’s not what I do. I have my own career and life,’” she shared. “He’ll really surprise you though. He’ll be like, ‘I’m not filming’ and then randomly show up. But I will get [the footage] and show him.”
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He also participated in the show’s creative direction. Adam Stotsky from E! shared with the New York Times that “[Kanye’s] a real creative force, clearly, and had thoughts on marketing, thoughts on the presentation of the show, on the opening title sequence.”
10. Kylie is very demanding.
Granted, this info was from her appearance on "The Ellen Show" way back in November 2015, but it gives people a good idea of what she expects from the crew on set.
A tabloid source reported that Kylie behind the scenes “wasn’t pretty.”
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They also reported that she was almost as bad as Kim whenever she came on the show. Kylie had demanded a long list of things; among them was her own personal “glam squad,” two dressing rooms, and she “insisted that she have two VIP parking spots, because she did not want to walk from the parking structure to the studio, which is less than a block away.”
11. Timing is everything.
All the drama is saved for the show.
Most viewers didn’t hear or understand anything about the details of Kim’s Paris robbery, Tristan Thompson's cheating scandals, or Kim and Kanye’s divorce until it began airing on E!. After all, they had to get those ratings, but more importantly, the timing of the drama is essential to the reality show’s success.
The Kardashians have pulled off a ton of PR stunts this way. For example, TMZ broke the news of Kylie’s pregnancy, spreading rumors that she was expecting only two days before the "KUWTK" 10th-anniversary special. That stunt had everyone tuning in to hear the news.
12. They’re always ready to shoot footage on their iPhones.
Jeff Jenkins, co-head of KUWTK’s production company, told The Hollywood Reporter, “There are days when there might be 30 crew people at a location to cover an event and there are days where there may be one person with an iPhone covering something incredibly intimate.”
The Season 18 finale was shot entirely on iPhones.
Due to coronavirus stay-at-home orders, the Kardashians had to shoot their show on iPhones. Executive producer Farnaz Farjam told Elle, “it’s less fly-on-the-wall because we have to give them direction, and they have to be more informative with us.” Still, he felt that since they were the Kardashians, they would be entertaining no matter how they filmed the show.
And if it wasn’t crazy enough, to ensure no one got sick, every week, each cast member received a brand-new iPhone, which they used to film 16 hours of footage, as reported by People Magazine. Isn’t that wild?
People Magazine also reported that crew members in full “hazmat suits” were sent into their homes to install lights and iPhone tripods for the confessionals, according to Farjam. In addition, the family “waited a full day before entering the room,” just in case.
13. True isn’t allowed to watch the show.
In 2018 on "KUWTK," Khloé publicly revealed the gender of her baby, and as I’m sure everyone knows by now, she had her daughter, True.
Khloé later went to Twitter to address fan inquiries about her baby, asking questions like what her name would be, so she provided a complete update in a post titled “All My Hopes for My Daughter.”
“I played this fun fill-in-the-blank game about my hopes for my daughter when she grows up!” she wrote.
Marie Claire reports that the fill-in-the-blank game revealed a lot about Khloé’s parenting style, including the revelation that she won’t let her daughter watch the reality series until she’s 13: “My child will be—13—when they watch their first episode of KUWTK.”
She seems to have changed her mind about this rule, however, because she recently shared a video of her daughter sitting down to watch an episode that discussed Thompson's cheating scandal.
But Khloé isn’t the only Kardashian parent to think about their kids watching the show. In the reality show’s final season, Kim and Scott discussed opening up to their children about their past, to which they said they knew it needed to happen, but they were “hesitant.”
It’s safe to say none of the Kardashian kids will be watching KUWTK anytime soon.
14. Kim has social media rules to follow.
Following Kim’s Paris robbery, the entire family increased their security.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter about how difficult things were being open about it on camera, Kendall told Kim, “Your situation was a scare for all of us.”
Kim later shared in the interview that she tightened the restraints on her social media, even when filming with a large team.
“It really changed our lives. This extra layer of security needed to happen. On social media, I’ll never post something where I’m at home unless I know there’s four to six [security guards]. We know when we’re filming, it doesn’t air until months later, so we can share that and be free and always be who we are,” she said.
15. Kim is the favorite, but Khloe is the fun one.
Kim had the nicest attitude toward the production team of the entire Kardashian family, which is why she is their favorite.
“She has remained the same since day one and the richer she got, the better she started treating everyone,” a source revealed to OK! Magazine. That’s probably why they don’t mind when Kim wants to film multiple takes for a scene.
On the other hand, Khloé is the one that keeps the laughter coming, making the atmosphere less tense. “She’s really fun to work with,” the source continued. “She loves to get drunk and shoot because it makes her open up [and be less] self-conscious.”
Drinking on the job may not seem like a good idea, but whatever works for her!
16. The family decided to end 'KUWTK.'
With the end of their 20-season long reality show, Keeping up with the Kardashians ended in early 2021 due to a better monetary deal, according to a source from Entertainment Tonight.
“The family is really excited about this new chapter and adventure and of course are not looking to get out of the spotlight," the source says.
But not to worry, soon after announcing the end of their show, the Kardashians shared that they signed an exclusive contract with Disney to star in and executive produce a new Hulu reality series, The Kardashians, which began airing in April 2022.
The Kardashian-Jenner family will generate global content as part of their newly established Disney partnership.
“They’ll still continue to share about their lives through the deal with Hulu, but now with the new, updated spin.”
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Ashley Darkwa-Anto is a writer at YourTango based in New Jersey. She covers News & Entertainment.