The first three people mentioned in the initial pages of Jonathan Van Meter’s Citizen Kim, the first authorized biography of Kim Kardashian, beyond Ms. K are, in order: Graydon Carter (he never invited her to the Vanity Fair Oscars party), Timothy Morton (postmodern philosopher of Hyperobjects fame), and Immanuel Kant (18th-century German proponent of transcendental idealism). Not the typical Kardashian syllabus. That’s not to say Citizen Kim leans too heavily on critical theory to elevate its subject, but Van Meter is ready to treat her with the same weight just the same.
Van Meter, a go-to profiler of A-list women from Madonna to Oprah during the halcyon days of probing celebrity profiles with plush word counts tucked inside copies of Vogue and New York magazine, who was once told by Linda Evangelista that she and fellow supermodel Christy Turlington “don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day,” had a daunting task in front of him. At once over- and underexposed, Kim Kardashian is a cipher. She pioneered the art of welcoming strangers into her world through the mediated digital platforms of social media and reality TV, yet she remains elusive. People see what they want to see in her—business mogul, airhead, fashion icon, product of the American Dream, cultural narcissus, peak influencer, plastic surgery parable, famous for being famous—all facets Van Meter explores in his book, which is based on unprecedented access to some of the most famous people in America: more than 100 hours of interviews with Kim, her family, and protagonists from the social worlds she’s popped up in over the last five years.
On top of that, virtually everyone in the Kardashian extended universe has already penned a book: Kris, Kourtney and Khloé, Caitlyn Jenner, their childhood nanny, even one of the French jewelry thieves who held Kim at gunpoint in 2016. What more could be said about Kim?
As it turns out, a lot. Van Meter organizes his account thematically, rather than chronologically, often interspersed with cozy interviews over shared cups of tea in Kim’s Hidden Hills compound. In what he likens to a “superhero origin story,” each chapter investigates Kim and Co. through a new lens. One explores the family’s canny use of spon-con, from Kris Jenner’s early infomercials to Instagram product placement. Another touches on race, Kim’s Armenian heritage, and the American dream for immigrant families. Still another traces how the fashion establishment first spurned, then eventually emulated, Kim and her sisters, one of the few chapters where the artist formerly known as Kanye West rears his head. (Van Meter, who entered Kim’s life around the end of her relationship with West, never ended up speaking to him for the book. “It kept the focus on her,” the author says.)
The rest—Kim’s first marriages, the sex tape (no, Van Meter didn’t watch it for the book, but his assistant did), the O.J. trial, and all the weird familial quirks that uniquely positioned the Kardashians to thrive in and then define the social-media age—is in there, however. The author brings a sharp, witty tone (at one point, he compares Lady Gaga, another former interview subject, to a “hairless cat”) to his source material, but what mostly comes across is a deep, abiding respect for a woman who has taken countless setbacks, invasions, and humiliations and turned them into an empire. Although a few subjects feel underexplored (plastic surgery, for one), the book is ultimately a rich page-turner reported from the eye of the hurricane, a dispatch from the life of the woman who made the social-media age in her own image.
We sat down with Van Meter ahead of the book’s release on Oct. 27.
Who were some of your first readers?
As soon as I finished, I gave it to the writer Mary Gabriel, whose Madonna biography came out a couple of years ago. She interviewed me for that book right as I was starting this book. She was just about finished, and I was just getting started—I was telling her all of my Madonna stories—and then she became my celebrity biography fairy godmother.
Then I gave it to my longtime friend Penelope Green, who is a writer for The New York Times, and my friend Jim Serven. The first people I gave it to were all people who had never seen a single episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians and didn’t really know anything about the Kardashians. I wanted to see if I had threaded the needle for people who don’t know anything about them. That first bit of feedback was, “Oh my God, I didn’t know I would care about this story so much.”
Is that the intended audience, people who maybe don’t have as much of a relationship with the Kardashians? Because on the other hand, there are also going to be the people who know every single tidbit about their lives.
That’s part of what made this so tricky to write, why it took five years. Penelope Green is a perfect example. She’s my age, in her early 60s, and her daughter is 29. Her daughter grew up obsessed with the Kardashians and watching the show, and Penelope had never seen the show and really didn’t understand her daughter’s obsession.
They both read the book, and they both loved it for different reasons. That was the goal: imagining the 29-year-old woman and then the middle-aged person who is Kardashian-curious, Kim-curious, but doesn’t know the story.
You really throw down the gauntlet intellectually in the first few pages. Can you talk about how you decided to frame that story in the beginning?
While I was writing, I kept stumbling on things like “the multipotentialite” and “the hyperobject.” It was like somebody was sending me signals, because I kept thinking, How do you describe this person? How do you actually explain what Kim is to the world? So many people are either bewildered and don’t have the context to understand her, or they’re inclined to think that she’s nothing but a girl with a sex tape, and they just dismiss her outright. But from my perspective, she’s a classic Warhol character in a way. She’s this enigmatic, incredibly famous person who, almost by design, is meant to be a bit confusing.
The other thing that was odd from the beginning was that I could find no historical analog to compare her to. Marilyn Monroe doesn’t really work, and Elizabeth Taylor, who’s her idol, doesn’t work. And then eventually, I just thought, She’s one of one. She’s a new thing. I think that’s what necessitated my searching for other language and ideas in unusual places to figure out how to explain Kim.
We’re no longer in this modern era where we have these icons, Marilyn or a Richard Nixon, who resolutely embody a specific cultural concept or value. The Kardashians are this miasma. They’re not just one thing. That’s reflected so well in the structure of the book, which looks at her through a new lens each time.
That structure was what finally made it work. I had storyboarded the book on a giant bulletin board that’s sitting right here empty. I finally took it all down. But as I was working my way through chronologically, I realized, Oh, boy, I can’t turn in 600 pages.
You would’ve run into other troubles, like her not even coming into the narrative until 200 pages in.
Yeah. It was problematic. The Kardashians touch on so many things: business, beauty, race, television—the history of it—and O.J. Simpson. It’s definitely the reason it took five years. I didn’t have to tear it up and start over after three years, but I had to reconceive the whole story in my head. I’m so glad I did.
When you say five years, was it five years writing, or does that include all the interviewing and reporting as well?
The whole thing. I sold the book right before Thanksgiving in 2020. My mom had just died, and it was this awful thing, the pandemic. I didn’t really start until March 2021. I started watching the show, every episode back-to-back, which was a total pleasure. Then in March 2021 I checked into a hotel in West Hollywood, and I started going to Kim’s house all the time.
I came back that summer. I rented a house in the Hollywood Hills for three months: June, July, and August. Then I came back again in the winter of 2022 for three months. The writing didn’t really start until the fall of 2022.
When did you first float the idea of doing a book to Kim?
First, I did a Kendall Vogue cover story almost exactly 10 years ago. In that profile, I talked to Kim on the phone for 20 minutes, and that’s when I first thought, Oh, wait a minute. Who are you?
I did another profile of Kendall in 2018, and then in 2019 I did the Kim cover story, which came out in March of that year. She was in Bali, and it was like 3 a.m. for her when the piece got posted, so she called me. I was with Chelsea Clinton, of all people. I was writing a profile of her in Washington, DC. Among the many things Kim said to me on the phone was, in the sweetest voice imaginable, “There’s no better feeling in the whole world than when somebody gets you.” And I said, “I’m gonna write a book about you someday.”
That was the moment. No one had ever said that to me before, in all of my years of writing profiles, mostly of women. Shoot that right into my veins. There’s no better feeling in the world than when someone gets you, and I thought, That’s life, right? It’s what we’re all looking for. I don’t know why, but it made me think there’s something wise about this person.
So the pandemic happened and I lost all of my magazine work, my Vogue contract, my New York magazine contract, and I just kinda spun out for a few months. I texted Kim and I said, “I think I’m gonna write a book proposal.” She was always encouraging. Then finally, when the book proposal was done, which took months, I texted her and I said, “I’m gonna write a book about you whether you like it or not, LOL.” And she wrote back, “I’m so honored and excited.”
I feel like the story of how the book happened tells you a lot about Kim’s character. She said yes based on a gut instinct. She didn’t put any preconditions on it.
Were there any stipulations?
No, other than I gave her the right to read the book for fact-checking purposes when it was finished and there was still time to make changes, which she did diligently, like homework. It was like any editor would give you.
I’m sure she didn’t think it would take five years—I certainly didn’t—but she never wavered. The loyalty part of it all—I never felt like I was bothering her. There was just something about the process that I suddenly realized says so much about how she operates. There were no middlemen. It was texting her or calling her. To schedule interviews, I would go through Ollie Ayling, her chief of staff, who became like my secret weapon.
Who were some of the ancillary people you interviewed who were most surprising or most valuable?
MJ, her grandmother who just died, was the most delightful human being I think I’ve ever met. I was so amazed by the detail and the carefulness with which she narrated the story of her family and her ancestors, Kris’s side of the family, going back to Arkansas.
Kris was great. And then Cici, Robert’s cousin, who all but helped Kris raise all the Kardashian kids. She was the first person I interviewed besides Kim, and I went back to her many times. Then Allison Statter, Kim’s best friend, I interviewed at length probably three or four times.
The most surprising one was Caitlyn. I was so struck by how thoughtful she was, and how crystal clear her memory was on things to do with 10- to 15-year-old Kim. I found those years the hardest, before the family was famous, before the O.J. Simpson trial, before anything was being documented.
Were there any people you reached out to who turned you down, who weren’t willing to go on the record?
There were people I reached out to who always said yes, and then I never interviewed them. It was bewildering to Kim because they are her friends. I don’t know whether they thought, I don’t really wanna do this, but I’m gonna pretend to say yes, or whether they were just flaky about it.
Not until I was almost done with the book did I think I probably should interview Paris, and I asked Kim, and she said, “Sure. Let me text her first, though.” She texted me back a couple of days later and said Paris was happy to do it. Then Kim said, “But could you go through her publicist?” Which was the first time that had come up. Eventually it was a lot of work to get her to say yes. I had to write out questions. Then she canceled on me, I think I counted it, 17 times over three or four months. It became like a running joke.
Her assistant was so mortified, but she was so dutiful in trying to reschedule it with me. Eventually I just gave up. When I told Kim, her reaction was so interesting. She was like, “Ugh.” It actually made her mad at something, but she wasn’t mad at me or the book or Paris not being interviewed for the book. It felt like an ancient annoyance. It brought up something about Paris that made her go, “Ugh.” Like she’d seen that kind of thing happen 1,000 times.
I admire the persistence. Did you try to talk to Kanye at all?
After the profile in Vogue—he was never around, I don’t know what he was doing when I was writing that—their marriage seemed fine then. I didn’t detect anything wrong, but I kept feeling his presence, like he had just been there. One time on the phone she was like, “Stop eating my sandwich,” like he was standing there eating her sandwich. So it was like I could feel him. When the book started, she said, “Of course you have to talk to Kanye,” but then the wheels started to come off the bus. She’d be like, “We’re gonna have to wait. Maybe let’s give it a few months.”
Then it just kept getting worse, and at some point, it occurred to me that I don’t know that it would be ethical for me to interview a person who is going through such a public and severe mental health crisis. I don’t think I would wanna talk to somebody who’s in the middle of a manic episode that appears to be going on for months on end. So finally Kim was like, “I guess that ship has sailed.”
We were both disappointed. I don’t know if it made it easier, but it kept the focus on her in a different way. When the shit hit the fan with him and the antisemitic stuff, I even thought, Ugh, what is this gonna do to my book? I’m never going to speak to him now. But it turned out to be not bad for the book, other than Kim had to disappear on me for a while because she was just in that crisis. I think it somehow helped me get rid of a whole bunch of material that maybe I would’ve written and then never used. It’s a funny conundrum.
He shows up in the chapter about the fashion world and how it eventually, slowly came to embrace Kim. But there’s a little bit less than I think a reader might expect.
I definitely had to make some choices along the way: things that I didn’t write about. I’m like, Oh, God, that old thing. I was writing an origin story—it took me a while to realize that. She’s like a superhero and this is her origin story. But the scandal, it’s so funny, there’s so many… I had this feeling that I was going to try to filter out all of the noise and nonsense and craziness that surrounds her and the family so that I could actually write the story of Kim. It definitely left a lot of things on the wayside. I had worried a little bit that people will think it’s scandal-free or something.
There’s this unbelievable cottage industry of content about the Kardashians. What was the thing you felt was missing that you were most excited to explore in all of this?
Kim’s story has never been told all in one place. Two of the most serious Kardashian books were actually—I don’t wanna slag them or the writers—but I just thought they were mean-spirited. One of them was particularly mean to Kris. It was very misogynistic, I thought.
There was a feeling of wanting to correct the record in a way, to tell the right story. I feel like Kim’s story has been told in these bursts of scandal or the reality television show. That shows one side of all of them, but it’s not a very complex… It’s a pretty goofy show. It made them seem like unserious people, and when you’re around them, you’re like, Oh, they’re very serious business people, and they’re funny, and they’re great talkers. I just had the sense that if I could capture a true story and filter out all the crazy, I would have something that was worth reading. That was definitely a choice that had to be made, for sure, to not revisit every scandal. So many of them are also so familiar. There’s so much stuff that when I would write it, people would be like, “You know what? We kinda know this,” because it was written about so much when it happened, or it was on the show.
Something that stuck out to me was more about it being this story of family and intergenerational inheritance. Not exactly trauma, but perseverance. Have you ever written about a royal family?
No, it’s so funny. People always ask me if there’s anybody I’ve never written about that I wished I could or that I would still love to. I used to say Jackie O in the ’80s and ’90s, and then she died. And then I would say Princess Diana, and then she died.
Meghan’s not next?
I was like, Ooh, they’re gonna put her on the cover of Vogue. I have to do that piece. But I don’t think that ever happened. I don’t think I’ve ever even met a member of the royal family, no.
The way that it’s written strikes me as a portrait of American royals in some way.
That was probably by design, unconsciously. Somewhere along the way I realized, What is the fundamental aspect of the Windsors? They’re true eccentrics: They live in a bubble, and they live in giant houses near each other. They pose for photographs for Christmas and Easter, sort of official portraits of the whole clan. All of these things are true for the Kardashians too. I don’t think people would get the word “eccentric.” It might at first glance seem like the wrong word for them, but they are true eccentrics, the Kardashians. They all live in the same neighborhood, and they all go back and forth to each other’s enormous houses. They always take these group photographs, and they present themselves to the world in that way. There’s definitely a shade of America’s royal family to them.
Of that extended Kardashian canon, what was your favorite thing to visit?
I think the show, for sure. I started saying that it’s the most misunderstood document in history. I was exaggerating. It’s more misunderstood than the Bible. If you only caught it in pieces and parts along the way over the many years, you wouldn’t get to see what I got to see, which was that if you watch every episode, about 300 of them back-to-back in six months, sometimes three a night, you get to see this incredible documentary of the family. None of them had any children when it started. George Bush was president. It’s the way the restaurants changed, hairstyles, clothing, cars. You see all this stuff changing. Them becoming chicer, some of them having more plastic surgery. Houses getting bigger and bigger. Families getting bigger and bigger. Everyone has babies.
I didn’t really understand until I watched it in that way—what did I know about preeclampsia or the difficulties of pregnancy and surrogacy? Women, I don’t think, really talk to men about the stuff to do with pregnancy and birth. I loved being able to go to the doctor with them, through the show, and see all these babies being born. I just thought there was something so interesting in how maternal the show was, literally.
They all became mothers, and how old-fashioned some of it is. Even Skims is old-fashioned: girdles and bras and panties and perfume. Everything about them is this mid-century idea of ladyhood, except updated and modernized and made relevant.
It is a fascinating pairing of extremes. There’s the mid-century sense of ladyhood, but they’re all business moguls as well.
There’s something about the show too that presents an ideal. I come from a family of sisters, and I had a very powerful, strong mother. So I relate. There was just a fundamental way of relating to them. But we all scattered to the winds, so it was so hard to get together, and that’s so common in this country.
Here’s this show about this family of siblings, and they all live near each other, and the kids, the grandkids, there are 13 of them riding bikes together and all going to the same school together. I think that’s what keeps it relevant. It’s like, wouldn’t we all want that in a way? Part of me wishes I had that. Wouldn’t it have been great to grow up with my cousins that close?
It’s the story of an American family.
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