Can you now keep up with The Girls?

It’s been nearly 20 years since Keeping Up With the Kardashians premiered on E! and helped shift the reality TV genre. Now, after years of having her own life and family filmed, Khloé Kardashian is stepping behind the camera to put the spotlight on her closest group of friends with her new unscripted series, The Girls: A Khloé Kardashian Project.

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The cast includes six women: Nicole Williams English, Olivia Pierson, Khadijah Haqq-McCray, Natalie Halcro, Malika Haqq and Yris Palmer. While all have experience in front of the camera except Palmer, they bring different histories and relationships to the group. Malika and Khadijah are longtime friends of Kardashian’s, while Williams English, Pierson and Halcro previously starred together on WAGS, another E! reality series.

The show, which premiered Friday on Hulu and Disney+, follows the women as they navigate motherhood, marriage, dating, business and their friendships with one another. Kardashian serves as an executive producer and narrator and appears onscreen at times,= but intentionally doesn’t position herself as a main castmember.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Kardashian opens up about the drama that surprised her, balancing being a boss and a friend as an EP and why she doesn’t want The Girls to feel like another Kardashian spinoff. She also praises her sisters Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner’s acting era and what’s ahead for the third season of her podcast, Khloé in Wonder Land. The Hollywood Reporter can also exclusively reveal that season eight of The Kardashians will premiere in October.

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What made you feel like this group of women deserved their own show and spotlight?

I knew they were comfortable in front of the camera. I also know that they genuinely like each other. At least some more than others, as I realized later. (Laughs.) So how we’ve all hung out, and what I didn’t really realize until we started filming was that there are definitely more little cliquey groups, or some hang out more one on one than others, and not all six have ever really hung out in depth this way. So if I’m having a birthday party or a kid’s birthday party, they’re always there.

Also, them being in my family, meaning all these girls are friends with different sisters in different ways, and they’ve all been around for so many years — at least a decade. I felt like this would be a great show. It’s an extension of us. They really are friends. They know where all the bodies are buried. They’re all really good girls. They all get along really well, so I thought. (Laughs.) How they have their own dynamics within each of the six of them is also really fascinating. Whenever I post them, people always have questions, so I’m like, OK, let’s let people see who they are because they’re such great, phenomenal women who have so much to offer and so much to show. People should know who they are.

You’ve spent so much of your life being filmed. What was it like to be on the other side of the camera and deciding what parts of your friends’ lives audiences get to see?

I left what parts of their lives up to them. But I did say, “When you do a reality show, the best thing to do is to be as open and transparent as possible.” Although they’re friends or acquaintances, when you’re doing a show with other people that aren’t family, those other people will probably want to expose you. (Laughs.) No matter how friendly you guys are. Because if someone feels like they are carrying more weight than the other, other people can get resentful.

I film with my sisters and family, and when we go through that where we feel like we’re doing more work than someone else, we get resentful, we’re frustrated and say our piece on camera. And the grace that family gives one another is also very different. So I made that very clear from the start: Be open. Some girls took that advice. Some girls didn’t. And you will see that unfold on camera.

These women are all been your close friends for years but not necessarily friends with each other. Some of them we’ve seen on reality TV before while others are being introduced for the first time. Did you feel responsibility for putting them back into the spotlight?

I had moments in this where I sort of regretted doing any of this because of the fighting and drama and me being in the middle because I put them all together. I’m now the EP. I didn’t think I would be involved as much as I was trying to navigate them through certain things. I thought, Most of them are used to TV. They’re fine on camera. Some of them took so many years off that it was like they were starting over again. And the insecurities of when you watch, like, “Is this going to sound right?” Because they don’t get to watch the show before it airs, so everyone’s spiraling and freaking out.

Also, because I am friends with them, they do feel like they can call me and be like, “So and so said this about me, and I didn’t like that and to get these cameras back up.” It was so fucking middle school. I was so shocked that these girls acted like that. Some of them are more cliquey than others, which is totally fine, but they never spent this much time with one another, and that didn’t go well for a few of them. I felt bad, like, did I ruin some friendships with one another? I don’t know. I thought it would be a much more seamless process, and it wasn’t. But with all that being said, I think that would make for great TV.

Was there any particular friendship that had drama and surprised you?

I didn’t think Natalie and Yris would not get along the way they did, and there’s some contention between those two, which surprised me. They would butt heads a lot throughout the season, and it would be more continuous. I wasn’t expecting that to happen. (Laughs.)

Were there any arguments or storylines that unfolded after cameras wrapped?

Oh my gosh, there’s a trip to Vegas that they take on camera, and there’s moments of that, and I should have known that maybe there’s some tension with them taking them to Vegas, where they’re partying. I just should have known that probably wasn’t going to go well. I just thought it was going to go really well, and there was definitely fighting there. We got a lot of it on camera, but we missed some. But they do make up for it, and there’s a lot of them. You still know exactly what happened. But even after the fact, I think everyone’s in their own heads.

I get it. Maybe the anxiety of not knowing what’s going to come out exactly, because you film so much and not knowing what’s going to make it air versus what won’t, that anxiety will probably eat away at anyone. So there’s a lot of phone calls, often like, “Are you sure I’m gonna look good, or did I say something like this? Did I do that?” I could never do that. So I empathize, but I really think everyone’s gonna love it.

With you appearing on the show and being an EP, there’s obviously a huge draw to it and a Kardashian connection. But you aren’t a main castmember, so was it important to you to make sure this felt like their show rather than another Kardashian spinoff?

Correct, and that’s exactly right. I’m in a certain amount of episodes, but I pop in and out because, in real life, I would be at those lunches, I would be doing those things. So I made sure to do what I would normally be doing with them, but I didn’t want to feel like a main character. I didn’t want it to feel like a Kardashian spinoff, like you said. I want them to have their own legs and to run with it. They’re that great of girls, and they can definitely carry the weight of the show. But I am also the narrator of the show, so it’s an extension of me for sure or my family.

I don’t want people to get confused and think it’s another Kardashian spinoff — it’s definitely not. This is all them. But in reality I am their friend, so I would be spending time with them. I think we did a really good job of me being around but not dominating.

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Do any of your sisters or anyone in the family make an appearance on the show, or was it, like you said, that you wanted to keep it separate for this project?

Yeah, they do. Kylie does because Kylie and Yris are really great friends, so it’s literally just our organic relationships. And Kim does, because Kim, Natalie and Olivia are really great friends. If I remember correctly, my mom does, too.

I think it would be weird if they didn’t, because this is just how we interact with these girls. It could be as little as FaceTimes, but these are really people in our close circle that we speak to. I speak to some of them every single day. It’s not us dominating. We are very much in the background. It’s not like it’s going to be a Kylie episode. It’s more like her having a conversation with Yris — just a very natural type of thing.

You’ve been doing reality TV for almost 20 years. What did you learn from being on the other side of the camera that you maybe wish you had known when you first started?

I’ll be honest with you: I loved how green I was. In hindsight, I loved that we were told, You guys might not get a second season, so go big or go home. This probably won’t go anywhere. Kourtney and I specifically did not think about it. We just were like, “Fuck it, we’re gonna film whatever we want to do.”

We were just goofs. We weren’t overthinking. We never thought we were gonna be famous or be a star — nothing like that. And that’s what made everything work the way it did because you could smell that stuff. You know when someone’s putting on. You know when someone’s contrived. We were just who we were. I was 22 years old. And to be green, naive and not overthink anything. What a blessing.

I remember watching in season three of Keeping Up With the Kardashians that you took an acting class, and Kourtney went with you for support. With your sisters Kim and Kylie breaking into the acting world over the last couple of years, with American Horror Story, All’s Fair and The Moment, is acting something that still interests you? Is that something you still ever think about?

I’m literally traumatized from that whole experience. (Laughs.) We can blame season three for why I am so traumatized when it comes to acting. But I get asked to act all the time and to do these roles. I’m never gonna say never, but currently it’s not something I feel like makes my heart happy. It’s not like where my passion is with anything.

But, oh my God, do I remember that scene and that acting class and having to say the word “hat” in so many different tones. It was horrible! But I love Kim and Kylie’s acting era.

Are there any projects you can say you were approached for?

I don’t know anything specific, but I get asked all the time: “Would you ever do a movie?” People will say someone wants you for a movie, and I’m like, no, no, no. I have taken meetings with people who wanted to do a scripted series with me, and I just don’t know if it’s my thing.

I’m so honored and so flattered. But I also don’t want to do something that I don’t feel like I could give 100 percent with. I don’t think it’s fair to any production, any people that are working their butts off. It would have to be something I take classes in, really study and try to be the best I can be at it. It’s not something I would ever do, like, OK, acting sounds cool today. That’s just not who I am. I would have to take it seriously, and right now, I don’t know if I have the bandwidth to do all that extra stuff to give another workplace what they deserve out of me.

Do you see yourself producing more reality shows centered on outside your family? Is building a slate of shows something that you want to do?

I do. I mean, again, I want to be very passionate and intentional with everything that I do. But I do see that. I really do enjoy it. I think with your friends, it’s a different level of work involved because it does get very personal. But I still really enjoy it.

I like being a therapist in a way to people. (Laughs.) But businessly, I find it really cool, really creative. I like the ins and out of it all. So yeah, I could see myself doing more.

Season three of Khloé in Wonder Land is releasing later this year. What are you excited about with that? And do you have any more dream guests to appear? You’ve had some really great ones.

I’ve had some fabulous guests. I’m excited for this new season because it’s going to be longer, which means I have more room to diversify a bit and see what has stuck with my audience versus what has not. The biggest thing that I want to do is branch out a little bit more. Last season, I did a lot of family [episodes], which I still love doing. I think people love that with us. It may be nostalgic for them. But I want to branch out into a ton of different genres.

I do love conspiracies. I love all that crazy stuff. I still love self-help-type things. Other doctors that know how to break down whatever issues are so fascinating. I did something with Dr. Amen, and the amount of people that got all this positive knowledge from him made me feel so good because it’s almost like I was giving back to people that couldn’t afford to see him themselves or didn’t have access to his clinics. So that makes me feel good when I’m able to provide real information to people where they have a takeaway. Those obviously aren’t in every podcast episode, but I love when I’m able to do things like that.

I could go from a celebrity to a doctor to a conspiracy theorist, and I have more room to play. I love how all over the place it is, but that’s why it’s Khloé in Wonder Land because my brain is fascinated by anything and everything.

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All six episodes of The Girls are now streaming on Hulu and Disney+.