Following 'All's Fair,' Why Does Kim Kardashian Want To Be An Actress?

Do yourself a favour this week and don’t watch All’s Fair. Sure, you may be tempted to check out Ryan Murphy’s latest drama because of its fascinating cast or because of that 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But trust me, it’s not worth your time. The series, about a group of women who run a law firm that specializes in high-priced divorces, is terrible. There’s no fun to be had here, not even in a drunken hate-watch. It might be the worst thing Murphy has ever done, which is say something in a year that also gave us the repugnant spectacle of Monster: The Ed Gein Story.

One imagines that the show’s lead, one Kim Kardashian, may soak up most of the negative attention or see the blame for its failure piled onto her shoulders. The ineptitude of All’s Fair is not her doing, but her presence in a show whose cast includes two Oscar nominees, three Emmy winners, and a murderer’s row of character actor favourites is undoubtedly glaring. And of course she’s bad in it. Did we expect her not to be? I know some people were surprisingly kind towards her work in American Horror Story, where set dressing does a lot of the heavy lifting, but she’s hilariously ill-equipped for this leading role. It’s not like she’s expected to give an Oscar-winning turn, and the material is lightweight to the point of ephemeral, but her absolute lack of interest and emotion is still weird.

Granted, the fact that her face can no longer move or express the vaguest hint of emotion was always going to hinder her. Kardashian, alas, is not alone in this issue with modern Hollywood. There are at least four or five actors whom I used to love that I can no longer take seriously because their facelifts and fillers have killed their expressiveness stone dead. Ryan Murphy knew what he was getting with Kardashian. But as a viewer, the uncanny nature of it all is almost curious. Is this a glimpse into the future of the film industry?

One wonders if Murphy and company even wanted Kardashian to try, which she 100% isn’t (through choice or otherwise.) This is stunt casting, pure and simple. It’s a tactic Murphy is familiar with. Remember when Travis Kelce was in Grotesquerie last year? This is old-school attention-seeking, which may be necessary in the post-Peak TV era. I get why he wanted the biggest and most divisive reality TV star of a generation on his show. But why did Kim want it? Isn’t she above all of this?

Kardashian has acted before. Aside from American Horror Story, she had a small role in Tyler Perry’s Temptations, one of his most egregiously woman-shaming titles, and her reviews were predictably bad. But her stratospheric rise to the upper echelons of celebrity power was largely forged through a more modern route. Reality TV helped to pave the way for her to dominate in the modern sphere of influencer and hustle culture that has reshaped the way we think about fame in the 21st century. The ceaseless drive of the Kardashian-Jenner clan to be both omnipresent and perennially bankable was rooted in social media as much as the traditional press. It was personality-driven, largely. Well, with the Kardashians, the matter is thornier.

If All’s Fair reveals anything, it’s Kardashian’s startling lack of aura. She doesn’t have a natural charm or warmth that would typically be required of a celebrity. Even in her own reality show, the focus more often fell on her sisters, like Khloe, whose humour and down-to-earth vibes pre-surgeries offered a fun foil to her sibling. Kim’s lack of identity was helpful in allowing her to change and appropriate to the trends, such as her hijacking of Black women’s bodies or her move into a couture princess under the control of her ex-husband Kanye West. Most recently, as she’s entered the billionaire girlboss classes, she’s returned to thinspo whiteness and conservatism with her new friends the Bezoses. Kim Kardashian is a vessel for ideas, fads, and controversies. Such things are easier to wield when they’re projected onto a blank slate.

So, why be an actress, the absolute antithesis of bland emptiness, a craft that requires a willingness to drop one’s vanity and put the story before oneself? Being an actress just because you can is certainly a demonstration of industry power. And remember, All’s Fair is built around Kardashian (she and her mother are executive producers.) She’s got enough pull, if only for marketing purposes, to get the biggest showrunner on the market to build a series around her, and have her be supported by Oscar nominees and Emmy winners. That might be the only reason to do it. She doesn’t have to beg Hollywood for attention. It comes to her doorstep.

Kardashian is studying law, bypassing university to receive her education through working with lawyers and apprenticing with Van Jones’ company. She passed the baby bar for the state of California on her fourth attempt in 2021. She has talked about potentially quitting her current work to practice law full-time in the ensuing years, but her seriousness on this endeavour has long been questioned. Recently, she admitted to using ChatGPT for help with her studies. Maybe All’s Fair was extended cosplay for someone who likes the idea of being a lawyer but cannot or will not do the work required to make it happen. I’m sure there are lots of merch and branding prospects to be mined from ‘Lawyer Kim’ screenshots of this series. Everything is an opportunity for profit, such is the Kardashian ethos. Fake lawyering will beat the real thing every time on that front.