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How do other people feel when a celebrity decides that they want to dabble in art? Because sometimes it makes me angry, and I need to know if I’m alone. I don’t think I am. It makes me struggle a little bit because I don’t want to be a gatekeeper, as previously stated, but some things should be off limits to people who don’t care enough, and I am serious. Let’s discuss!
You may be wondering what is she on about? Well, with the annual release of Variety’s Actors on Actors conversations, I await some really interesting discussions between actors who I know and love and others who I haven’t been introduced to yet, and it’s fascinating to me. I love a good interview. It’s fun to get an insight into these actors’ personalities and interests and just get an idea of the type of head that they have on their shoulders. It humanizes them. And in a cultural space where we usually only get 7-10 minute (if that) rushed and superficial conversations on late night TV shows, it’s refreshing to see them in a more calm environment, speaking to someone who does the same thing that they do.
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Anyway, I really love these conversations. This year, so far, I’ve watched Emma Corrin and Elizabeth Debicki’s, Leo Woodall and Nicholas Galitzine’s, and Anthony Mackie and Tyler James Williams’s (what great pairings!!!). There is one that I probably should watch just for this piece but I refuse to for the very reason I’m writing this and that is the conversation between Chloë Sevigny and Kim Kardashian. Sigh.
The internet has already been a little up in arms about this pairing, in part because a real actor like Chloë Sevigny has been (unfairly, in a lot of people’s opinions, including mine) paired up with someone who is not a real actor. An imposter, if you will. And if you need to know anything about me, it’s that I cannot stand the Kardashians (Jenners included). There was a point in time where I watched the first 12 seasons of their show religiously. And then I saw the light. They are a family who will do anything to make a buck. They have had a slew of (failing) companies attached to them, they hoard wealth, they make money off cosplaying Black people, they don’t pay their employees enough, they have created some of the most destructive beauty standards we have in American culture, and despite being born on third base somehow find the nerve to tell people to “Get your fucking ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days.”
Moving beyond my personal distaste for Ms. Kimberly Kardashian and her family, my greater annoyance with the infiltration (crossover?) of celebrities into artistic spaces is that they don’t seem to respect the space and what is expected within it. Acting may seem like it’s easy enough, I mean we all dip our toes into it in some capacity, right? School plays, or faking an injury on the sports field, or straight-up lying, even flirting. But acting in a show or a movie or even a commercial is actual work and it takes some skill. There’s a lot of people who are just okay at it, some even subpar, but there are a lot of people who are really great at it as well. These Actors on Actors conversations are usually reserved for the latter. And in that group, there is usually a respect for the craft (which, admittedly, is a little bit antithetical to what I quoted Hugh Grant on last week, but even so, Hugh Grant probably has a different impetus for acting than Kim Kardashian, which is my point), i.e. these actors want to perform well for the art of it and because they believe in what they are doing. I don’t think Kim Kardashian even knows what that means.
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My upset is derived from my ability to see that Kim Kardashian is money-driven, as is the rest of her family. Does she care about acting? Or does she just see it as an opportunity to hold on to her cultural relevance? Being money-driven isn’t necessarily a bad thing, most people are, because getting money is how they, and us all, can sustain ourselves. But for people as privileged as those who get asked to do these interviews, money is usually no longer the impetus for their picking and choosing these projects that they’re a part of. They really want to play these parts or work with X director and the money is welcome, because it is a job, but it’s not purely because of the money. It’s not so much a business endeavor as it is a creative one. And what I think is that the public has sniffed out that Kim Kardashian’s foray into acting is not driven by her creativity.
Kim Kardashian is hardly the first or the last person to do this, but I’m harping so much on her because she’s sort of the worst case scenario of this phenomenon. Her and her family members jump on anything that can make them money, even when it’s proven to be harmful, or just not vetted in the slightest. Sometimes this transition can go well, for example Troye Sivan. He started out on YouTube and now has a thriving music career. What’s a little different about him is that he seems to genuinely want to make music and cares a lot about the product that he’s putting out. I’m no Troye Sivan stan, but I can tell, even from afar, that it’s not a cash grab for him.
Another example, less egregious than the Kardashians but ironically semi-involving one of them, is Addison Rae. Addison Rae is one of the big stars who came out of TikTok. Addison Rae and the D’Amelio sisters were all that was talked about a few years ago. They got big dancing on TikTok and doing watered down versions of dances that Black people created (oop) and were able to slide into mainstream popularity with appearances on Jimmy Fallon and opportunities to create businesses and act. Let’s just say, these things were not very successful.
Audiences can sniff out a fake from a mile away, and when no effort is put into creative endeavors it’s painfully obvious. And it hurts to watch someone get these opportunities and squander them when others, who have been working to land parts in the entertainment industry with no connections or social media success behind them, get continually passed over for people who care less and have less talent.
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The more I flesh out my thoughts on this, the more I realize that my annoyance here is the same annoyance that I have with sequels. Having no more story to tell has never stopped Hollywood (to quote Lacey Rose in another one of my favorite interview series that releases around this time of year, The Hollywood Reporter Actor roundtables). If a story is successful, they will always try and make a sequel, even if it’s not warranted, even if nobody wants it, just because they can make more money. It’s greedy. If it’s actually the right thing to do on the creative side, it can really work, but when it’s not, it leaves the audience wishing the original work had been left alone (Peaky Blinders movie, I beg of you, don’t fail me). Creativity needs authenticity, and when it doesn’t have it, it suffers, and so does the audience.
So when someone like Kim Kardashian, a person who has proven time and time again that money is their only driver, decides she wants to be an actor, people have a lot to say about it. It doesn’t help that public opinion of the Kardashians seems to be declining as the years go on and people tire of their routine, but this, unfortunately, means that the Kardashian machine is clinging on for dear life, resulting in them hopping on trains that are moving in directions they are not meant to be going in, like acting.