Kim Kardashian is looking back on the early days of her rise to fame and admitting she once went to unusual lengths to get noticed. During a candid appearance on her sister Khloé Kardashian’s podcast, Khloe In Wonderland, the reality star and SKIMS founder shared a story about how she and her longtime friend Jonathan Cheban deliberately fooled paparazzi outside a New York hotel.
Reflecting on her mindset at the time, Kim was blunt about her ambition. “It [being famous] was all I wanted, I lived for it…” she said, explaining that the desire for recognition shaped many of her choices before she became a global celebrity.
She recalled being out at a restaurant with Jonathan when they overheard people talking about Britney Spears staying at a hotel in New York. That conversation sparked an idea. “We were at a restaurant and we heard these people like, ‘Oh Britney Spears is staying at this hotel in New York’,” Kim explained.
The pair decided to use the moment to their advantage. A fellow diner happened to have a luxury car, which gave them the opportunity they needed. “So this person at dinner had this crazy Phantom Rolls-Royce. Jonathan and I could hardly even get a cab.
So, we were like, ‘Can we get a ride to our hotel?’ and the guy’s like: ‘Yeah.’ And we were like, we’ll sit in the back.” Arriving at the hotel in a high-end car created exactly the impression they hoped for. “So, it looks like we got out with a driver at this hotel, and we got out.
Paparazzi everywhere waiting for Britney. At her hotel. They weren’t following us at this point, and we got out and they were like, ‘Kim, Kim, Kim, are you here to visit Britney?’ and Jonathan’s like, ‘Keep your head down and just like shut up.’”
The situation became even more awkward once they were inside, because they did not actually know anyone at the hotel. Kim admitted, “So we go inside and we go into a phone booth because we don’t know anyone at this hotel. We don’t even know if there’s a hotel bar we can walk into. So we go and, like, hang up the phone for 20 minutes in this hotel.
And we’re like, ‘Alright, let’s go out’.” When they finally stepped back outside, the photographers were still there. “And we come out, and they’re like: ‘Kim how was Britney?’ We took a cab I think because this Rolls-Royce dropped us off…” she said. The result was more attention than they expected.
“We totally scammed the system, and it was on like every cover, and we thought we were killing it.” Kim also revealed that Jonathan coached her on handling paparazzi in general, often encouraging her to draw inspiration from Victoria Beckham. “There was one time where Jonathan was like, ‘You have got to stop smiling. Like, Victoria Beckham never smiles.’
And we’d walk out of Intermix on Robertson, he’d be like, ‘Victoria, Victoria,’ and I’d stop smiling because [usually] I’d be like: ‘Hi guys!’ you know, to the paps. And he’d be like, ‘Victoria’.” The story offers a rare glimpse into how calculated and deliberate Kim’s early pursuit of fame really was, long before she became one of the most recognizable figures in pop culture.
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