One of the most reliably fun aspects of E!’s long-running reality behemoth Keeping Up With the Kardashians is that the plot lines often provide an alternate perspective (scripted or outlined though it may be) to stories about the family that we heard months—or in some cases, just weeks—before. It’s the family’s way of maintaining control of the narrative and making their version canon.
This Sunday’s episode of the series, now in its 12th season, appears to cover the days surrounding Kim’s recent GQcover story—you know, the one where she called Taylor Swift a litigious lil’ liar. Based on this photo of Kim in the same outfit, the episode appears to have been filmed on May 29, 2016—roughly two weeks before the profile was published, and, based on a rough understanding of magazine schedules, some time after the interview took place. In the clip below, Kim appears to discuss all the things she told the magazine about Taylor Swift’s feud with her husband, Kanye West.
“I never talk shit about anyone, like, publicly, like, especially in interviews, but I was just like, I’ve so had it, I just felt like I wanted to defend him in it. ‘Cause like, she legitimately quote says As soon as I get on that Grammy red carpet, I’m gonna tell the press I was in on it…just another way to play the victim. It definitely got her a lot of attention the first time.”
She goes on:
“Yeah, Kanye definitely hurt her years ago when he [interrupted her VMAs speech], but like it wasn’t meant to be personal. It could have been anyone. We all know that “Single Ladies” was the biggest song of the year…So I think when she didn’t win, he just wanted to stand up for it.”
“I’m so glad you said the truth,” Kourtney says, as though powering down.
“Yeah, I’m just like, speaking the truth,” Kim reiterates, before a bizarre bit of editing. The clip ends with Kim saying, “Like, he called her, spoke to her, she even helped him like rewrite, you know, it’s so wild.” All the cuts in that response suggest several things Kim said were removed—or even re-dubbed—in order to provide something suitable for airing.
Whether the bizarre edits were meant to hide nastier insults Kim didn’t want to share with the public or simply to keep the clip under a certain time is unclear, but the coincidental timing of the footage being released so soon after Calvin’s public evisceration of Taylor has me suspecting that we’re on the verge of a major tipping point regarding the willingness of celebrities to spill their stockpiles of Swift-related tea.
