The reality star's friends and family open up about her rise to fame in the new special, 'Who Is Kim Kardashian West?'
One of the most famous faces in the world is opening up like never before in the new E! True Hollywood Story, "Who Is Kim Kardashian West?"
In hour-long special, which airs on Sunday, Oct. 13 but premiered in full on YouTube on Monday, Kim -- along with her friends, family, and experts on her massively successful public persona -- gets candid about her rise to fame and the pressures of life in the spotlight.
"She's a trailblazer for social media," Kim's sister, Khloe Kardashian, says in the all-new special, as her husband, Kanye West, adds, "We've just begun to untap the power that she has."
While Kim's lived most of the past two decades in the public eye, there are still a few things we don't know about the internet-breaking social media maven. Here's a look at a few of the biggest revelations from "Who Is Kim Kardashian West?":
1. The O.J. Simpson trial taught Kim valuable lessons about her family and the media.
The 1994 murder trial was a pivotal point for the Kardashian family, as her father, Robert Kardashian Sr. worked on Simpson's legal team, while her mom, Kris Jenner, was mourning her close friend Nicole Brown Simpson. Despite the fact that her parents had divorced years prior, Kim remembers the time period as "the first time my family really got divided."
"One day my dad took me and Kourtney into the trial," she recalls, "and then my mom happened to be sitting with Nicole's family, and we looked over and my mom was looking at us, like, 'What are you girls doing here? Why are you sitting on that side?'"
Kim also remembers how the media backlash spilled into their home lives -- vandals spray-painted "n***er lover" on her dad's car while the family was at dinner, and news outlets misreported her as "Robert Kardashian's mistress" when she visited his house.
"I was like, this can't be real -- they lie like this?" she recalls thinking. "I learned the lesson of, not everything is what you think it is."
2. Paris Hilton was a major contributor in Kim's rise to fame -- and taught her one very important lesson.
Kim grew up with Paris and her siblings, but around 2006, the Hilton heiress' public profile was at an all-time high -- and going out with her friend meant major attention from paparazzi. "She was best known as being Paris Hilton's sidekick," entertainment reporter Leslie Bruce says of Kim in the special, "but in reality, I think that girl was on a mission."
And Paris' media savvy came in handy more than once as Kim started to step into the spotlight.
"I remember we were sitting in her SLR Mercedes... and at that point, the paparazzi would lay on the ground to try and get a picture of you, up your dress, and she said, 'OK. We need to make sure you don't give them that,'" Kim said of her famous friend, who also helped launch her career by bringing her on several episodes of her own reality show, The Simple Life. "She was such a great mentor for me. I really am grateful for my experiences with her...She's a huge, huge reason for my success."
3. Kathie Lee Gifford was also instrumental in getting the Kardashian family on TV.
The Today show host was BFFs with Kris Jenner, and pushed her to get her family life on camera for the world to see.
"[She] would tell me constantly, 'You guys need a show, nobody would believe what goes on in your life,'" Kris remembers. "This went on for a couple of years, until I met the casting director for Dancing With the Stars. She came over for dinner once night and was just watching all of this chaos. She goes, 'This is just crazy, I've got to introduce you to Ryan Seacrest.'"
The momager met the reality host-turned-producer, and the rest, as they say, was history.
4. Kim once tricked the press into thinking she was hanging out with Britney Spears.
As Kim started to become a bigger star, she learned more savvy ways of dealing with the media. In the special, the reality star's BFF, Jonathan Cheban, explains how they once made a major headline out of nothing.
"We were in New York, and Britney Spears was in this hotel, locked up in her room," he recalls. "We notice there's paparazzi outside."
"We got a ride in a Rolls Royce. We pull up, the paparazzi got us getting out [of the car]," Kim continues. The pair admit they just went in to the hotel lobby and hid for a few moments before exiting, but it was enough to fool the paps. "They said in the press that we were there to have dinner with Britney Spears -- this whole thing didn't even happen."
5. Kim and Kanye have very different ways of coping with her Paris robbery.
In October 2016, the dark side of Kim's fame and exposure presented itself in a terrifying way, when armed assailants broke into her Paris hotel room, tied her up and absconded with her jewels and valuables. Kim recalls the robbery as "the scariest thing I've ever been through in my entire life -- just, thinking that you're about to die."
Kanye, who is perhaps more candid about his wife and his marriage in this special than ever before, admits it's hard for him to think of the scary encounter. "There are a lot of thoughts running through my head, related to that time," he says. "I don't like to watch those movies. Memories are movies in your mind -- I like to watch the happy ones.
However, for Kim, "that ten minutes really changed my whole life," and continues to influence her to this day. In addition to delaying her social media posts, the scare also helped influence her pursuit of a law degree and interest in criminal justice
"There's those moments in like that really change you, and shake you to your core. my robbery was definitely that moments for me," she reflects. "As crazy as this sounds, I wouldn't give up that experience for the lessons I learned from it... Material things used to be so important to me. I measured my success by my material things. But there is nothing material that is important to me."
See more about Kim in the video below. E!'s True Hollywood Story, "Who Is Kim Kardashian West" airs Sunday, Oct. 13 at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
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