NYTimes

“It doesn’t mean that we’re always looking for more or that we’re greedy,” Kris said. “There’s a lot of people that have great ideas and dreams and whatnot, but unless you’re willing to work really, really hard, and work for what you want, it’s never going to happen. And that’s what’s so great about the girls. It’s all about their work ethic.”

All the family has to do to be successful is to opt in to the very public experience of living. They have to share their secrets, broadcast their doctor’s appointments, admit that their whim of a marriage was a terrible idea, ugly-cry when they remember their father, let the cameras roll as they emote jealousy or anger or confusion or humiliation. If they do all this, the family business thrives. In February, The New York Post reported (via a cover that said “Big Ass Deal”) that the family signed a reported $100 million deal to extend their flagship show on E! (A representative for E! called The Post’s figure “grossly inaccurate” but would not disclose the actual amount.) In 2012, that same extension deal was reported to be a mere $40 million.

Two Wheaties boxes featuring Bruce in his Olympic heyday stood in a closet off the foyer. An assistant had placed a set of Christmas stockings monogrammed with the names of all Kris’s children and stepchildren and grandchildren on a round table. Kris asked her to have this set, a duplicate, sent over to Bruce’s new house in Malibu. Their divorce was finalized in December. They just couldn’t get along the way they used to, she told me. That he would, a few weeks after we spoke, announce to Diane Sawyer that he is and always has been a woman may have been a factor, too, though one she wouldn’t elaborate on. “At the end of the day, I just want him to be happy,” she said. “He’s going to find his happiness, and he’s going to have his journey.”

She has been called a control freak many times, both on the show and in interviews, by her daughters and by Bruce, whose bank card she once confiscated as the cameras rolled. “I guess if I get a little weird about something that isn’t the way I want it, and I complain, then it’s called controlling,” she said. “I like everything a certain way. I’m not somebody who can just lay back and let it happen. That’s never going to happen for me. And I think that’s what’s gotten me to where I am in life, at the same time. I can’t turn it on and off.”

Kris and her children didn’t do much press for Season 10, unheard-of for this family or anyone promoting a TV show, really. Call it an educated guess to say that perhaps they didn’t want to be asked about Bruce’s transition. But not because they were shielding Bruce, whom they love. It was not because he needed his privacy during this sensitive time, which was the reason so often cited in articles about the rumors that preceded the ABC special. Bruce picked up some lessons from Kris over the years: He has signed on to do a “docuseries” with the same production company that produces their show (though Kris is not involved in it). Bruce has no privacy; none of them do. That’s the deal they made with one another. When they’re silent on Bruce, they aren’t protecting him from the judgments of a cruel world; they are protecting Bruce’s exclusive. “I learned a lot from her,” Bruce said about his marriage to Kris, during the ABC interview. And so he did: He didn’t reveal how he looks dressed in women’s clothing in the interview or what his new name is. You’ll have to tune in to his show to see that. In the Kris Jenner playbook, you don’t give anything away.

From the Comments, the first reality show was the Loud family