The new season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians is just hours away from starting and promises to be as dramatic as past years. It will also feature a familiar face more frequently: Kim Kardashian West’s husband, rapper Kanye West, who will do his own on-camera-confessionals.
Since West and Kardashian began dating, the rapper has been a presence on the series and that has only grown since their 2014 wedding. The New York Times described him as the show’s “creative director,” noting that he had input on everything from the opening titles to the backdrop in the confessions.
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“He’s a real creative force, clearly, and had thoughts on marketing, thoughts on presentation of the show, on the opening title sequence,” E! Network President Adam Stotsky told the Times.
When Kardashian and West were dating, there was a scene where he threw out her clothes during a closet makeover.
“So, it’s basically like that but for business,” Kardashian explained. “He’ll have a room full of a dozen people or sometimes three of us and we go over packaging and colors and the photo shoot.”
The sisters’ schedules take them all over the world, but the series still brings them together. Kardashian believes fans like to tune in to the show to see them be normal, as opposed to the jet-setting image they have on social media and in tabloid headlines.
Fans would “think, ‘Oh they desperately want to be famous and we’ve watched their rise’ and now it’s taken the complete opposite effect of ‘We really want to tune in to see the normalcy,’” Kardashian explained. “It’s the complete flip of how it started.”
Every season seems to lean on dramatic moments of the Kardashians’ lives that played out in the media during its off-season. This year, the fallout from the cheating scandal involving Khloe Kardashian’s ex-boyfriend Tristan Thompson and Kylie Jenner’s best friend Jordyn Woods promises to be a major storyline.
In a dramatic preview Kardashian shared on March 27, Khloe is seen in tears over her breakup with Thompson playing out in public.
“It just sucks it has to be so public,” Khloe said through tears in the trailer. “I’m not just a TV show. Like, this is my life.”
Khloe added, “Tristan might love me, whatever that means. He has no respect for me whatsoever.”
There was also a scene from a family event with Woods in attendance from before the scandal. “Here’s to Jordyn and Kylie,” momager Kris Jenner says in the clip.
“I just hope that there’s a light at the end of this tunnel, but I don’t see it right now,” Jenner said in the trailer.
As for Kardashian, her storyline will involve West contemplating a move backto his hometown of Chicago, an idea Kardashian says “might be my breaking point.” Kardashian and West are also expecting their fourth child, a son via a surrogate.
“I’m frantically trying to get the room ready,” Kardashian told the Times. “It’s madness, but the best madness.”
Keeping Up With The Kardashians Season 16 airs on E! Network at 9 p.m. ET Sundays.
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