It’s hard to believe, but getting Keeping Up with the Kardashiansoff the ground was no small feat.
During Thursday’s episode of the Emergency Contact podcast, guest Kourtney Kardashian told co-hosts Simon Huck and Melissa Gray Washington that it was initially difficult to get a network to pick up the now-iconic reality series.
Kourtney, 41, said her sister Kim Kardashian West, 40, was the first to be contacted about a potential show.
“This producer that met Kim had just found her really interesting and wanted to shoot with her, so they came and Kim was like, ‘Can we come to the store?'” she recalled, referring to Dash, the clothing store they ran alongside sister Khloé, 36.
Kourtney continued, “They came to the store and the girl was like, ‘Oh my God, you and your sisters! This is everything.’ So then we started trying to pitch a show, like, [about] the sisters. I remember we went to E!, we went to everything — I think no one wanted it or something.”
The show fans know and love today finally came to be when a casting director came over to the family’s house for dinner and told family matriarch Kris Jenner, “‘This has to be a reality show — I’m calling Ryan Seacrest.'”
“They introduced Ryan to my mom and then we made a reel, and it just was picked up right away,” Kourtney said. “I think something happened with like, Lindsay Lohan’s show and they needed filler, and so they were like, ‘Oh, this is going to be a one-season thing.'”
Over a decade later, the show is currently airing its 20th and final season with Seacrest serving as an executive producer. Kourtney, whose three children with ex Scott Disick — Mason, 11, Penelope, 8, and Reign, 6 — have all grown up on the reality series, said it was difficult at first to get used to filming.
“It’s hard when you first start filming, because I would think about like, ‘Oh my God, what did I say? What did I do?'” she said. “But then I didn’t realize how little of it is actually used, and that you also don’t know how editors are going to edit it and make you look, or what the intention is. I think once we started seeing edits, I felt more comfortable.”
Of the show’s upcoming conclusion, the Poosh founder said it’s “bittersweet” but “exciting” nonetheless.
“I think we get so scared of change, just as people … but I don’t know, I’m excited,” she said. “It is bittersweet thinking of the crew that we have seen every day for like 13 years.”
Keeping Up with the Kardashians airs Thursdays (8 p.m. ET) on E!
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