[paparazzi clamoring]
[reporter] Kanye is the man!
[Zan] All of a sudden, a divorce is definitely happening.
And it was such a big news story.
[reporter] Hmm, sad news for Kim and Kanye fans.
Filing for divorce from her husband Kanye West,
their high profile marriage coming to an end.
According to Forbes, the couple is worth $2 billion.
[Neama] Both Kim and Kanye said they wanted an amicable divorce.
Soon, it was clear that it was not gonna be the case.
It turned nasty, it turned litigious.
You're watching this giant partnership crumble apart.
At any moment, Kanye can start airing dirty laundry,
can start putting up obnoxious tweets,
saying things about Kim.
Her reputation is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
There was so much at stake in this case.
Billion dollar companies, properties all over the country,
and four children.
[man] Julianna, come here for a second, please,
and bring me Ye's prenup.
The stated reason for the divorce was irreconcilable differences,
but the real question was,
why was Kim leaving Kanye?
[Virginia] This was so dangerous for Kim,
he's trying to keep tabs on her,
he's trying to control her.
It was just relentless.
[man] Kanye objected to the way
that Kim was parenting the children.
I know y'all don't respect fathers, it always leans towards the mom.
[Sheeraz] She tried everything to save her marriage.
Kanye West was just ranting and raving.
Acting out, behaving very inappropriately.
Imagine living with that 24/7.
♪ I tell my soul ♪
- ♪ Fall in love again ♪ - ♪ Fall in love again ♪
♪ I tell my soul ♪
- ♪ Forget and forgive ♪ - ♪ Forget and forgive ♪
♪ I'm dreamin' in fire ♪
♪ It's got me on the devil's list ♪
♪ I tell my soul ♪
♪ Fall in love, fall in love again ♪
[paparazzi clamoring]
Kim Kardashian is one of the most photographed people on the entire planet.
[paparazzi clamoring]
[Dax] There are constantly photographers
waiting to capture every move she makes.
[paparazzi clamoring]
[Zan] We think of Kim Kardashian as being public property,
and that's in part because she is a very new kind of celebrity.
She's a woman with a reality TV show,
she has given us a lot over the years.
Kim is extremely controlled in public
while there were things going on behind the scenes,
private things and struggles that she had,
and fights that she was fighting
through some very difficult times.
[woman] It's 2020, Kanye and Kim have been living apart.
Her in Los Angeles, him in Wyoming.
At the time, Kim Kardashian went out to Wyoming
because Kanye was just off the rails,
to kind of urge him to seek help mentally.
This comes on the heels of countless rumors,
that they were having trouble in their marriage.
[Dax] And so, it was no surprise
that there was paparazzi in Wyoming
tracking where Kanye West was at that time.
And the second that the two of them go out to the fast food joint,
of course, they followed 'em all the way there,
and it was when that really infamous photo was taken.
[Zan] TMZ captures her in the parking lot of a Wendy's
and she's clearly really upset.
[Dax] Y ou saw that vulnerable, sad side of Kim
where she's just breaking down crying.
She was struggling with their marriage,
struggling to hold the family together without him.
She's crying, she's gesticulating,
she looks like she's pleading with Kanye.
And she looks like a woman in crisis.
That was just the tip of the iceberg
of what was really happening behind the scenes
with Kanye.
Welcome to the Hollywood Raw podcast, I'm Dax Holt,
and let's get into it this week.
I feel like we can't go a single day
without Kim, Kanye,
someone from the Kardashian family in the news per always.
I don't picture my career without Kim Kardashian, honestly,
because her family, the Kardashians as a whole,
I mean, as crazy as it sounds,
they are our Royal Family over here in the United States.
[paparazzi clamoring]
When we first ran into each other,
she was just Paris Hilton's best friend, she was the stylist.
We would see each other at parties, we would hang out.
We had developed a friendship beyond just...
celebrity and reporter.
[paparazzi clamoring]
[Dax] She's very warm, she's very approachable.
It's not like you're talking to this huge celebrity.
She becomes normal Kim Kardashian,
and she gets trashed on all the time
because people love to hate on her.
But she really is a sweet, sweet person.
Anyone that knows me knows that I love hard
and I live my life on a reality show,
my life is so open, I share so much.
But to share relationship details,
I think that part I would really keep sacred.
And then, I've gotta ask you about this bloke, Kanye West.
- [audience cheering] - [mouthing] Who is that?
- Oh, look, what a lovely pair. - [Kim] Who's that?
- [Alan] What a lovely pair. - [Kim chuckles]
- [chuckles] - [Alan] Um--
[audience exclaiming]
Kim and Kanye were in a brand new relationship,
and they would talk about it on TV.
I think Kim Kardashian has always wanted love,
and I think she wanted this to the end-all be-all relationship.
And it was like fire at the beginning, it was fireworks.
You can see through different interviews
they have this, like, fairytale romance.
I can see he makes your whole heart smile.
Your face lights up when you speak about him.
- Really? - [Oprah] Yeah.
- Does his bad boy image scare you? - [Kim] No.
Not at all.
[Dax] I mean, you see a lot of fake PR couples go around.
But there was something different with Kim and Kanye.
You could tell that they were actually in love,
this was not something just to make headlines.
Kim was a huge influence for Kanye.
Huge, transformed his business,
transformed his image.
But, in Kanye's credit,
he also was extremely influential for Kim.
They would support each other's brands,
cross-promoting themselves,
it was the definition of a power couple.
Is anyone getting a tape of this?
Because I hope you do, you can see me when I'm famous
and old you'll remember me.
[Sheeraz] I remember when I first met Kim 20 years ago,
honestly, she was just a young girl
with a sparkle in her eye,
an innocent soul that had a dream to become famous.
Hey guys, I ran into Sheeraz.
- Hello. - You've no idea the journeys we've been on together.
[Sheeraz] This is the area right now
that I used to strategically position Kim for restaurants.
You'd see her coming out of restaurants,
paparazzi showing up.
So, this place is The Ivy.
I used to use this restaurant
pretty much as my red carpet for her in Hollywood.
Just here, stop.
The-- through those doors there,
was Kim Kardashian's apartment.
All her dreams, all our goals, all our fame strategies
was built from this one small little apartment here
into becoming the most famous person in the world,
and today, a billionaire.
[paparazzi clamoring]
[Sheeraz] What attracted Kim Kardashian to Kanye West
in the beginning was his support, his belief in her.
Kanye West was magnetized.
I was stunned.
I thought, "Oh my God, Kim,
you've got the most famous rapper on earth
that's like, a little puppy."
Well, Kanye West, he is an artist
and his whole thing is it's about fashion
and so, he sees this vision
she was the muse,
he was the fashion guru
and I think that she was very open to it.
On the show they show he had rented out
the entire AT&T Park stadium.
He had a full orchestra,
he had fireworks.
So, you're watching this over-the-top gigantic event.
[gasping]
[Dax] In full Kanye and Kim fashion.
[Kanye speaking]
[Zan] The-- one of the, sort of bonds, between Kim and Kanye
was that they both lost parents that they were really close to.
Um, Kanye's mother Donda
died of complications related to plastic surgery in 2007,
and Kim's father Robert died of cancer, uh, when she was a teenager.
Her father's death absolutely changed her.
Kim's been sharing recently notes that she used to write to her father,
throwback photos, she really looked up to him.
It's not just, he died and that was hard,
but these life events, where it's, you know,
getting married, having children,
meant missing their dad continually.
Her family life means everything for Kim,
and this marriage going well
was a really big deal and it really meant something to her.
Like everything that the couple did, it was a spectacle.
But, you know, I think there was some sense
that there was trouble in paradise.
I think that Kanye began to fall apart
early in that relationship.
Kanye wanted everything Kanye's way,
and when Kanye doesn't get his way,
he created these temper tantrums.
You can never predict how he's gonna act and what he's gonna do.
It was our early glimpse into someone
whose control ultimately would work against him.
There was a big shift in, I think, relationships
once Kanye came on the scene, um,
uh, you know I noticed at that time
Kim went and basically
wiped out all of the people that she followed on Twitter
unless they were like, family or really close friends,
myself included in that-- [chuckles] that wipe out.
And I think it was a strategic move from Kanye West.
I remember when I saw the first, let's call it, "red flag",
you know, with Kim and Kanye,
is when I'd spent months and months and months of planning
for Kim Kardashian to do an appearance in Kuwait and Bahrain,
and at the time she was pregnant with North.
And, I think,
Kanye said to Kim,
"You are not going to Kuwait. You are pregnant."
And in Kim's defense, you know, she said, "This is my business",
she fought with Kanye, and she got on that plane.
She came, she delivered and then she went back home.
But, one by one, you know, people that Kim had worked with for many, many years
they were no longer around.
You know, he was trying to control the inner circle.
[Zan] One of the early things that they did publicly
was that he came on Keeping Up With the Kardashians
and emptied out her closet.
"I don't like your clothes, we're giving almost everything away."
[Kim] Okay, do we not like these?
Mmm-mmm.
- No, no, no, no, no. - [Kanye] I just--
- I need these. - [Kanye speaking]
Oh, yes, yes.
But shouldn't I just keep this for my daughter one day?
Um...
- [Kanye] Sometimes silence is the best response. - You use--
[Virginia] One might look at that and think, "Isn't it wonderful?
He is lavishing attention on her."
It's terrifying,
because he's trying to control her.
[Kanye] How do you feel, baby?
Like, I'm literally crying.
We see Kanye really with a lack of boundaries.
It's really not his business how she dresses.
Some of Kanye's, sort of behavior towards Kim
in the early stages of their relationship,
you know, in context here, you can read one way, right?
He's changing her fashion style,
he's changing her public image, right?
He's changing who she hangs out with
because he's made her A-lister,
she has these different friends now.
But, if you saw this happen with a civilian woman,
you might feel very differently about it,
I think it's possible to say
right, you know, he's controlling what she wants to look like
and who she hangs out with, like, those are red flags.
This pattern of behavior didn't just happen with Kim,
it happened with his previous girlfriend Amber Rose.
You know they have these stores called Build-a-Bear,
where children can go and they make a teddy bear,
that's how Kanye built his girlfriends.
So, Amber Rose was someone that most people did not know
until she got with Kanye West.
He dresses her up,
he parades her around,
she goes where he wants her to go,
does what he wants her to do,
but at her own admission,
the controlling nature of the relationship
is something that she really regretted once she got out of it.
[DJ Envy] Special guest here this morning.
- [man] He's back! - He's back!
Kanye West!
- Wassup? - [DJ Envy] I didn't think it was gonna happen--
After Kanye and Amber broke up,
he said very derogatory things about her in the public.
If Kim had, like, dated me when I first--
wanted to be, well, I wouldn't be with Amber Rose.
You know what I'm sayin', like...
I'd take 30 showers before I got with Kim.
- You know, I-- - [all laughing]
[DJ Envy] Ladies and gentlemen, it's Kanye West.
He said after being with her he had to take, like, 30 showers.
He was really mean to this woman that he said he loved.
To slut shame me and say yeah, you needed 30 showers,
- it's like, well... - [Adam] Right.
- Took me around the world. - [Adam] Hmm.
Like, since when do you need 30 showers?
Amber Rose goes on a podcast called No Jumper
and in this interview, she really lifts the lid
on her former relationship with Kanye West.
And you just realized this, you were never gonna be happier
or content in that environment?
Yeah, I opted out.
I don't want my life to be like that.
I'm not that type of person.
Her leaving him
clearly caused him to have a visceral reaction.
He couldn't control the fact that Amber Rose wants out.
He has picked on me for te--
He has bullied me for ten years.
It's like, bro, just leave me alone.
When things are good with Kanye, he...
dotes them with gifts and praise and compliments.
- [Kim] This is what I wake up to, guys. - [Kanye plays piano]
But the moment they decide that this relationship no longer works for them,
then he turns on them.
[Zan] So, the thing about Kanye West is,
he's always been a very outspoken personality
and Kim knew that when she married him.
And so there were these kind of public cracks that were happening.
There was a time in 2015 when he went on Twitter and was like,
I'm $53 million in debt.
You know, that's some publicity that she didn't necessarily wanna have.
But he has gone on rant on the set of SNL.
You see, they laughin' at me, you heard them? They screamed at me.
They bully me.
They bullied me backstage, they said, "Don't go out there with that hat on."
But then, he was also involuntarily committed in 2016.
So, there had been these kind of moments
making headlines and not in a good way for the family.
[Dax] I think she was embarrassed publicly.
She had this fairytale image of, like,
I wanna be together with this man for the rest of my life
and raise our children,
and I think that slipping through her fingers
took a really big toll on her.
[Jawn] I believe the downfall for Kanye West
was when he admitted, uh, in an interview with TMZ in 2018,
that he was no longer taking his meds
because he did not like the way it made him feel
and it caused him to gain weight.
I'm takin' two-- hey, everyone listen to this, please.
These pills that they want me to take three of a day,
I take one a week, maybe two a week.
Y'all have me scared of myself, of my vision.
So I took some pills so I wouldn't go to hospital
and prove everyone right.
[Jawn] His actions after that day
really just started a cycle
of really unpredictable, uncontrollable Kanye West behavior.
[notification tone beeps]
[Jawn] Then, it just became something that, on any given day,
and the middle of the night,
you would wake up to a Kanye rant on Twitter
with some inappropriate post on Instagram.
[Dax] She then has to respond, because the world is saying,
"Kim, we see your husband being wild over here,
what do you have to say?"
- [Kim] The thing is, when he gets ramped up-- - He has to do it.
- [Kim] He can't control what he says... - Yeah, let it go.
- [Kim] ...he can't let it go, like-- - Yeah, he can't let it go.
But he loves being ramped up.
He's like, "I feel powerful when I'm ramped up."
Like, "I don't wanna be, like, so suppressed."
Like, "Yeah, I say crazy [bleep], but I've always said crazy [bleep]."
- "But that's why I'm Kanye", you know? - Kanye, right.
Kim's acknowledging that Kanye has serious mental health issues,
that he gets ramped up
and instead of that being a sign
"Oh, maybe I need to take my medication
and think more before I say something",
it seems to just spur him on.
It's your job to be able to manage your treatments,
whether that's medication, therapy.
Just because you have something,
it doesn't let you off the hook for not treating it.
[reporter] Kanye, coming in strong, come on, Kanye.
[Dax] So, there was a very well-known incident back in 2019
when you see this shift between Kanye West
styling Kim Kardashian
and having all the say-so in her look, her sexuality, everything.
It's kinda like the first time we see Kim Kardashian
her own fashion decisions.
Kanye can come in and take some with me,
but I definitely want solos.
[Dax] And on the show they show the moment that he sees her in it.
You know, last night I was having really bad anxiety,
and I don't need any more negative energy
for you to now say that you're not into me wearing a tank dress.
[Kanye speaking]
[Kim] You built me up to have-- be this, like, sexy person
and confidence, and all this stuff.
- [Kanye] Yeah. - Just because you're on a journey
and you're on your transformation
doesn't mean that I'm in the r-- I'm in the same spot with you.
- So... - Okay, all right, you know, all right, I'll go.
[Dax] She was like, you're bringing on a lot of anxiety
before a huge day.
And if you look back at the photos from the Met Gala,
all eyes were focused on her,
and he just seems kinda scowl-y in the background,
like he just didn't approve of what was happening
I think you see evidence of Kanye's black and white thinking
by the way that it's either she's this fantasy creature
or she's terrible.
Because he could no longer control her,
that was very threatening for him.
So, he then had all these negative feelings
that he couldn't really manage,
and I think that's when we started to see
his behavior get more and more scary.
[photographer] Kim, by yourself, please.
Kim Kardashian had worked really hard with her family
to build this very controlled and very precise brand.
And she was in this professional metamorphosis.
She's someone who started as
a socialite, who ended up reality star,
but now she wanted more credibility.
- Kim Kardashian West. - [all applauding]
[Dax] That's why she started to go down the lawyer route,
to actually do good in this world.
[Kim] Hi.
Um, it really is such an honor to be here.
I just wanna thank the President
for really standing behind this issue.
She's meeting with President Trump to get people out of jail
he's meeting with President Trump to basically
derail everything out there.
It was a really weird time
and I think the dynamics between the two of them were so conflicting
because they just had different objectives at that time.
She also was a really good mom.
So, she wanted to maintain the normalcy of the family life for her kids.
And she knew she had this erratic, unhealthy, unmedicated husband
who would risk it all just to prove a point.
[Kanye] I gotta let y'all know
I'm moving back to Chicago and I'm never leaving again.
[crowd cheering]
[Kim] That is so insane...
[Zan] The biggest sign that Kim and Kanye's marriage was on the rocks,
Kim finds out that Kanye has announced on stage
that the whole family's moving to Chicago.
The thing that set me off
was, okay, that should've been a conversation
before I see on the internet you're moving to Chicago.
- I find out-- - [Kanye] No, no, I told you that before.
We had that conversation.
- We all talked about that. - [Kim] Not a serious conversation.
It was a-- any conversation I have is serious.
I don't joke, I don't play.
[Zan] That's very tough when your partner is just telling people that
you know, you're gonna pick up and move from a city
that you have deep ties to, that your family lives in.
And she talks in that episode about him kind of making these unilateral decisions.
But he's not really taking into account what her life needs.
Isolation is a form of coercive control.
It's very well-known that in domestic abuse situations
the abusive partner will try to prevent
the other partner from seeing friends and family.
Uh, that helps exert a lot of control over them
and I think for Kim, she had to be pretty desperate.
She just never knew what was gonna come next.
[reporter] As the words rolled off his tongue...
I have decided in 2020...
[reporter] ...eyes rolled.
- [Kanye] ...to run for President. - [crowd exclaims]
The rapper and designer says
he's making a run for the Oval Office.
Gives a whole new meaning to the west wing.
- That's-- - [all exclaim]
[Kanye speaking]
[crowd exclaiming]
[applauds]
[crowd murmuring] You didn't.
[Lisa] It was so shocking when Kanye revealed
that they had considered an abortion.
What a violation of Kim's privacy rights.
There's just nothing to be gained
by him saying that publicly
other than shock value,
getting attention for his absurd presidential run.
[Zan] One of the Kardashian sort of tools
is that they just don't talk about things.
If there's not a flattering story, they do not give it oxygen.
So one of the reasons that the South Carolina rally
felt so different is 'cause Kim did address it.
She put up an Instagram post basically saying,
"We're trying to deal with this as privately as possible,
please have patience with us."
For her to admit that there was a situation that she couldn't control,
there were struggles that she had and fights that she was fighting,
really let you know that something very different was happening here.
This was a really bad situation.
I think what really was the...
was the nail in the coffin for their marriage
was Kanye West going on Twitter
and going against the family.
[notification dings]
And then he put up one tweet in particular
that really, I think, upset the Kardashian family,
which was he said, "Kris Jenner tried to lock him up."
"Lock him up."
This was around the time that Britney Spears' conservatorship
was becoming a hot topic again,
and we were really thinking about, you know,
what it means to put
involuntary psychiatric holds on people.
Um, so there was really some sense that Kanye was suggesting that
he was maybe gonna be sort of legally imprisoned by these people.
[Dax] I mean... [sighs] I think there was
a lot of issues in the marriage,
but I would say Kanye not seeking
the help that he needed was probably a big problem between the two of them
because if you're not willing to help yourself,
then how are you gonna be a good dad?
How are you gonna be a good husband?
How are you gonna be a good person
if you're not worried about your own mental health?
[reporter 1] Hmm, sad news for Kim and Kanye fans.
[reporter 2] This morning, one of Hollywood's
biggest power couples is calling it quits.
It was the biggest news story on the planet.
It made headlines everywhere.
According to Forbes,
the couple is worth $2 billion.
They have a prenup and now the heightened attention of all their fans.
[reporter] If the divorce is anything like the marriage,
much of it will be played out in public.
Laura Wasser is a Hollywood attorney
that you pay big bucks to when you need to get out of a complicated marriage.
[Lisa] They had to be very tough going up against Kanye
because his behavior was so erratic and unpredictable.
Any moment, Kanye can start airing dirty laundry,
he can start saying things about Kim.
Her reputation is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The amount of dollars that she gets from Kanye
and the division of property is a distant second.
And I think for Kim, she made it clear that
protecting her children, protecting her family,
and protecting her reputation were of paramount importance to her.
[Zan] Kanye had been going through a lot
sort of directly before this divorce very publicly.
And Kim had been quiet and Kim had been standing by her man.
But since the split, Kim has talked more and more
often using Keeping Up with the Kardashians
about more difficult times in that marriage.
If people knew what my relationship
really was like, I think they would be like,
- "How did this last this long?" - Yeah.
But I can live with myself
- knowing that I tried everything... - [Khloe] Yeah.
...humanly possible to make a situation work.
[Lisa] Usually, there's one party who does not want
to get divorced and that's the person who drags it out
because they're not really ready to accept reality.
Kanye's argued that the prenup was invalid,
that, in general, in California, prenups are invalid.
None of that makes any sense.
Prenups are definitely valid in California,
courts enforce them everyday.
It really seems to me like Kanye was trying to stall
and delay and muck up the system
to make it go as slowly as possible
and trying to delay the inevitable,
which is a divorce from Kim Kardashian.
But then the second him and Kim are separate,
he starts dating Julia Fox.
There were photoshoots of him and Julia, constant posting,
matching outfits on social media.
[Lisa] Kanye wanted to do what Kanye wanted to do.
If he wants to date, he's going to date.
If he wants to slow down the system, he's going to slow down the system.
He just didn't want Kim to date.
[piano music playing]
[Dax] Pete Davidson, here in the US,
he's a huge comedic actor,
he's on a television show called Saturday Night Live.
It's so beautiful, Aladdin.
I've never gotten to see what it's like
outside of the palace.
But it's even better seeing it with you.
They actually meet during a filming
when she was hosting Saturday Night Live.
Now are you gonna kiss me or not?
They've had this famous kiss
and then they end up falling for each other.
[audience cheering]
She had been in such a serious,
sad mood for so long,
and then here comes Pete Davidson.
I think it was such a breath of fresh air for her
that she immediately, like,
really, really liked the guy.
[crowd cheering]
Oh, Kanye West did not like
when she got with Pete Davidson.
- [man] Goddamn it. - [crowd cheering]
He was calling radio announcers,
telling them not to support her being with other people
as she was moving on and wanting to date.
He wanted to get her back.
SNL making my wife say, "I divorced him" on TV
'cause they just wanted to get that bar off
and I ain't never even seen the papers, we're not even divorced.
Wow.
So how we... [stutters] 'Cause that ain't no joke to me.
My-- My kids want their parents to stay together.
I want their-- I want us to be together.
[Zan] Kanye couldn't have reacted worse
to Kim and Pete getting together.
He was all over Twitter and Instagram,
um, gave Pete the nickname Skete,
just sort of trash-talking him.
He mocked up a newspaper
indicating that he had killed Pete Davidson.
[Virginia] What Kanye is doing with airing all of this stuff
so publicly is very dangerous
because he has all these fans
who emulate his behavior.
So it could really put Kim at risk,
it could have put Pete at risk.
And it's also, you know,
young men who may then go on to treat the women
in their lives in a similar way
because their hero has told them that this is how a man behaves.
[Lisa] If I were Laura Wasser,
I would definitely have used Kanye's social media posts against him.
Inciting your fans to harm Pete Davidson
is very dangerous and potentially criminal behavior.
You want the judge to see that the other side is behaving very badly,
my side is behaving ethically and respectfully
because you want the judge to see what's really going on here.
[Kanye] This thanksgiving is all about restoring the families.
I've made mistakes.
I've publicly done things that were not acceptable
as a husband.
But I'm here to change that narrative.
Kanye demonstrated that he was unwilling to accept
the marriage was over in a lot of ways.
He was going out in public and doing these events,
making these increasingly outrageous statements.
He has been very clear that he's not happy about this divorce.
He absolutely wants Kim to be his and only his.
[Kanye speaking]
Here he is just, like, putting himself out there,
you know, being so sweet. How could you say no to something like that?
Um, well, the answer is because she doesn't want to, right? [chuckles]
♪ I need you to run right back, baby ♪
♪ More specifically, Kimberly ♪
[crowd cheering]
[Zan] At the Larry Hoover Benefit Concert,
he calls Kim out by name,
right, this very public plea.
This behavior seems like it was very frustrating for Kim.
She's trying to move on with her life,
parent her children, run her companies.
And to have Kanye just constantly
putting his name next to hers in the news,
scary and also frustrating.
It's very unusual for a divorce case
to be bifurcated or separated in two,
but because Kanye was delaying the case so long,
Kim needed to send a message to Kanye
that there was no hope for reconciliation
and that they should start working on the children
and how to divide their assets.
But Kanye was desperate to keep this marriage together at all costs.
[Zan] Kanye's behavior definitely came off as creepy.
And he was just absolutely unwilling to accept what was happening.
Kanye bought the house across the street from her
extensively so he could see the kids, but also then,
he's keeping an eye on her comings and going,
giving you the sense of "I will not leave you alone.
There's nothing you can say including 'I wanna legally separate myself from you'
that will convince me not to pursue you."
Around Valentine's Day, he had trucks of flowers delivered to Kim's house.
[Virginia] These big showy romantic gestures.
to me, don't seem romantic at all.
It's very attention-seeking,
it's love bombing.
And love bombing, it's not about love,
it's about flooding the other person with attention
so that you can then control them.
It's just this relentless pattern
of trying to wear her down emotionally,
so apparently, she would come back to him.
[Zan] It's hard to imagine a motive for all of Kanye's legal wrangling
other than just wanting to drag it out
as long as possible to stay married to Kim.
The divorce felt like another reflection of his controlling behavior.
Kanye had a narrative of he was a jilted husband
and Kim moved on
and she had a new relationship,
that Kim is trying to take the children from him.
And North is like, "I wanna...
I-- I want you to come upstairs and see something."
And it's like, "Oh, Daddy can't come inside."
And I'm hearing that the new boyfriend is actually in the house
that I can't even go to.
And ain't no security gonna get in between me and my children.
In this interview, Kanye is saying that
this is about the children, that he's not allowed to participate.
But it's really not about the kids.
It's about him needing to control everything
and so he's launched this terrorism campaign
so that he can stay psychologically engaged with her
and the children stay kind of in the middle of a war zone.
[Neama] In a filing, Kim references harassment by Kanye.
And she says, "I very much desire to be divorced."
Kanye has been putting a lot of misinformation
regarding our private family matters
and co-parenting on social media,
which has created emotional distress.
I believe that the court terminating our marital status
will help Kanye to accept that our marital relationship is over
and to move forward on a better path.
I heard directly from Kim Kardashian's inner circle
of how this divorce was affecting her.
Nightmares, couldn't go to sleep,
anxiety, issues, relationship issues,
confidence issues, you name it.
That was real pain.
I think she felt that, you know, besides everything that they'd gone through,
Kanye was her best friend.
You know, I don't think she ever expected
to go through a tug of war.
It makes you uncomfortable, man, because I see a woman
who wants to live her life without being harassed.
What she's going through is terrifying to watch
and it shines a spotlight
on what so many women go through
when they choose to leave. You know, people always say that phrase,
to women, they go like, "Why didn't you leave?
Oh, why didn't you leave, why didn't you leave?"
Yeah, because a lot of women realize when they do leave,
the guy will get even crazier.
[Zan] Trevor Noah, as the host of The Daily Show,
was really one of the first people to sort of call
Kanye's behavior for what it was, which was harassment.
It's certainly been voices, you know, on Twitter,
various places, people expressing concern,
but he was the first really big public voice
to say there are people behind these stories,
um, and something kind of scary is happening here.
And it's demonstrating to women that you can leave a man
and have him still pursue you. And we're giving a really
bad message to women who are in abusive relationships
when we condone this behavior and write it off.
[reporter] Kim Kardashian is no longer Mrs. West.
It really dropped like an anvil,
it was a huge deal
in the sort of celebrity news world.
[reporter 1] Judge granted Kim's bifurcation request
to restore her marital status to single.
Ye was not present for the hearing.
[reporter 2] The 44-year-old has posted numerous times about their split
and the SKIMS founder relationship with Pete Davidson.
[Kanye singing] ♪ We havin' the best divorce ever ♪
♪ If we go to court, we'll go to court together ♪
♪ Matter of fact, pick up your sis, we'll go to Kourt's together ♪
In this music video called "Eazy" by Kanye West,
It may be called "Eazy" but it's not easy to watch.
♪ God saved me from that crash ♪
- ♪ Just so I can beat Pete Davidson's ass ♪ - ♪ Who? ♪
[Dax] You see Pete decapitated,
you see his grave, like, really dug into this man
who had nothing to do with the dissolution of his marriage.
They've got four kids. She's trying to block her kids
from all the craziness that their dad was putting her through
and I think it was exhausting for her.
[Zan] Kanye posting his screenshots of text messages
she sent him, you know, saying,
"This is really scary and someone's gonna get hurt
if you don't stop doing this."
[Virginia] I think Kanye's tactic is to wear her down.
It was just relentless. He just kept at her.
This pattern of behavior seems to me to be
such a sign of grandiosity that you would think that
you could get away with this.
It won't have an impact on your divorce case,
that it doesn't make you look like
perhaps not the most fit parent.
So it indicates that he's not really
in touch with reality.
[Jawn] I've consistently said throughout the years
that if the Kanye West that we've been seeing in public
is as repulsive as he is,
imagine living with him behind closed doors.
[Ellen] With so much going on in your life,
everything that's going on with Kanye,
you always protect him because of the kids
- and I think that's a beautiful thing. - [crowd cheering]
- Thank you. - [Jawn] What you see in this clip is
Kim is working really hard to keep some normalcy for her kids.
I always want my kids to just see the best of the best.
So I just try to, as hard as it can be sometimes,
I do try to ignore it
and just try to do whatever's best for the kids.
[Neama] The case became messy because of the children.
Kim's living in California,
Kanye is in Wyoming.
It's physically impossible for the children
to be in both places at once.
The legal drama spills over into social media.
I'm just wishing my daughter a public "Happy Birthday".
I wasn't allowed to know where her party was.
Kanye was going out there, putting out to the public that
Kim was making him jump through hoops,
making him take drug tests.
She wasn't inviting him to the birthday parties.
And Kim responded. She's like,
"You were invited to birthday parties.
You were here this morning picking up the kids,
so don't go out there and look like the victim when that's not the case.
And I very much had you involved with the kids' life.
I saw Kanye really behaving like an emotional terrorist
because he bullied her through social media
with these crazy texts and...
Twitter rants that he went on. I mean, they were violent.
It was really emotionally abusive behavior.
He just seems on attack with Kim all the time.
And it's never anything that he did to contribute to the problem.
Clearly, what it does is it damages her reputation
but it gets him so much attention.
It's sort of trying to paint himself
as the victim in the public's eyes.
[camera shutters clicking]
[Dax] Kim had finally had enough
and she goes on Instagram and really sounds on--
Let me pull up the quote. It says,
[Dax reading]
I think that was really Kim saying,
"Kanye, please be done, close your mouth.
Let us move on in peace. We have children together."
- I definitely protected him. - [Angie] Mmm-hmm.
No matter what is happening in the world, like,
- I have to have that, you know... - [Angie] Hmm.
...smile on my face and blast his music
and sing along with my kids
and act like nothing's wrong, you know.
As soon as I drop them off, I can have a good cry or, you know,
text back and do what I gotta do.
One of the most telling things she said was
she'll be in the car taking her kids to school
and they're listening to Kanye's music
and she sings along with them.
Because she wants them to think back on their childhood and think,
"Yeah, my mom supported my dad."
I had the best dad
I had-- [softly] I don't wanna get emotional.
- Aw. - [crying] It's just been a day for me.
- Co-parenting, it's really fucking hard, you know? - Mmm-hmm.
Part of why she's making the choices she's making
with co-parenting is to help her children have
some of the good feelings that she had in childhood with their own father.
But at some point, they're bound to see some of the texts
that their father wrote, or the things that he put on Twitter
and that's a terrible position for a child to be in.
[notification dings]
Kim Kardashian's number one love right now is her children.
Imagine you have billions of people reading
the most horrific messages about you.
Painful messages ripping your entire family apart.
And during this time,
she's still looking after the kids.
While Dad is attacking me,
I am being a mum
and looking after our children.
There's not many women out there
that could take that level of abuse publicly.
By October 2022, there was no settlement
and judge Cochran set the case for trial.
[Lisa] Laura Wasser had to be thinking,
"This is not good for Kim.
We do not want to go to trial, let's try to resolve it."
So there's the court of public opinion and then there's the court of law.
The court of public opinion is probably more important to Kim
than the court of law. She has her reputation.
Once that trial date is set, we have a ticking clock
and both sides are motivated to get this thing settled
before they have to show up at the courthouse doors.
[reporter] Most recently, it has been his
controversial behavior getting attention.
Anti-Semitic posts and interviews
spreading conspiracy theories about Jewish control
over the media and government.
Hateful rhetoric now being echoed by a celebrity
with tens of millions of followers.
- [notification dings] - [Dax] There was this tweet he put up,
going death con 3 on all the Jews.
And it really
put him in a negative light.
The backlash was huge, the media came after him.
This is really all about standing up against hate speech.
- Nothing you're saying has anything to do with-- - My brilliant idea-- Ay, boy.
- Ay, boy. Ay, boy. - Don't call me boy.
Don't finish-- I told you.
Oh, and don't treat me like a boy then.
- I'm not. - I'mma finish my sentence and my idea.
Nothing you're saying has got anything...
- Do not, okay. - ...to do with the tweet.
[Jawn] Kim was trying her best to be supportive of Kanye
even when he was falling apart in public.
But I think even she had to say, "Enough is enough."
[reporter reading]
[solemn instrumental music playing]
[Dax] Kim and Kanye are officially divorced
and the assets have been divided.
It's actually a pretty fair settlement.
Uh, she gets to keep the Calabasas house
and, uh, they're basically get to keep the bulk of both of their fortune.
[solemn instrumental music playing]
[Lisa] Considering the years of Kanye's bad behavior,
he got off very lightly without even a slap on the wrist.
That's because Kim just wanted this to be over with.
She didn't want a big public trial.
[camera shutters clicking]
I think Kim got out just in time.
She got out just before every brand dropped Kanye.
She escaped from being associated with that.
[Kim] I am the one
being accused for so many things
and blamed for so many things.
And it really, really is hurtful and it sucks.
It's like the hardest feeling
to watch someone you really loved and you have a family with
just be so different than who you knew.
♪ I tell my soul ♪
- ♪ Fall in love, forgive ♪ - ♪ Fall in love and forgive ♪
♪ I tell my soul ♪
- ♪ Fall in love, forgive ♪ - ♪ Fall in love and forgive ♪
- ♪ Oh ♪ - ♪ I've been dreaming fire ♪
♪ It's got me On the devil's list ♪
♪ I tell my soul... ♪