Kim Kardashian Can't Act

We did 20 takes and that was the best one. Acting isn't as easy as it looks. There's definitely a sentiment out there that if the production team are talented enough you could stick virtually anyone on screen and they should be able to at least pull off the basics. But this is because when acting is done right it comes off as so natural that it doesn't even register as something difficult to do. You show up, you say your lines, have some fun, then go home and wait for the praise to roll in. But despite what we may like to believe, being able to consistently showcase your vulnerability in front of a film crew under the pressure of a production schedule isn't something most of us could pull off. Yes we could all probably say the lines but we couldn't deliver them in a way that keeps the audience invested. As that's really what actors are. Politicians for the project. Not only are they the speaker selling the story on camera to make it feel real but they're also the face of the show that are sent out to market its watchability. So if you're the star of one of the most watched reality tv series of all time and used to being in front of never-ending paparazzi surely it isn't a stretch to imagine you can act. Yes you may not have had any formal training but you've had media training so that's sort of the same thing right? Wrong. As demonstrated in Hulu's All's Fair starring Kim Kardashian in her first starring television role. She had appeared in things like American Horror Story before and other little bit roles but something consistent throughout her voyage into acting is that she just plays herself. Someone who looks sounds and lives basically the same lifestyle she does. All's Fair was panned by critics and I'd be lying if I said I even slightly enjoyed it but let's be honest I'm not the target audience. There's definitely a place for camp over-the-top escapism. It's just not my thing unless it's genuinely funny. However whether you somewhat like or actively hate the show I don't think there's any escaping that Kim's performance here sticks out like a sore thumb. Nevertheless the show still topped Hulu's streaming charts so she did technically fulfill one half of the bargain. She sold the show and pulled in the numbers but when it comes to getting the audience invested in the story or her character it's a solid fail. So let's take a deeper look at why Kim Kardashian's performance as powerhouse lawyer Allura Grant falls flat. The first issue is that it feels like the entire production is working around Kim's inability to act. Even the absurd over-the-top tone of the show seems like it was only adopted so that her performance would blend in with her co-stars because as long as everyone's being a bit ridiculous it is harder to notice her shortcomings. But it didn't take me long to notice that whenever there's something emotional or a monologue that requires actual charisma they just hand it off to one of her co-stars to do the heavy lifting. Which is weird because Kim's character is meant to be this tough badass boss. She's always front and center in the legal negotiations yet still somehow feels absent from the scene as she's mostly only given these connective lines of dialogue that set up other actors to speak for paragraphs at a time. One of the men to fill our pain. All right take me through it. But this is how it goes, this is the name of the game. So what's next? From looking at other shows you can see that when you have real trust in an actor to deliver a legal scene they tend to dominate proceedings showing us why their character is good at what they do. But Kim always needs to have her co-stars on either side do most of the talking which makes her supposedly dynamic legal mind feel redundant. This is why it's hard to consider her a scene partner in most of the scenes she's in as she sort of just hovers around the other actors as they do their work by standing there as the person listening but barely participating. And then when there is a scene that's centered around her character being dealt an emotional blow they strangely tend to just cut to another scene later without actually showing us her emotionally processing the information in real time. You know acting? For example and this is my favorite moment in the first four episodes when her husband leaves her for another woman a scene that I will cover more later in this video rather than crying or arguing or showing how much this five-year marriage means to her right then and there they just cut to later that night when her friends arrive and then track into her sitting by a fire with these slightly red teary eyes which is more reminiscent than anything else so they skip the whole emoting part of the scene and just show us see she is upset before the characters then all sit around joking about how she has bad taste in men and she's laughing along with them which again never sells us on the idea that she's actually invested in this marriage at all as a viewer you need to show me this stupid relationship means something to you in order for me to care this even happens again later when her close friends have to break the news that her soon-to-be ex-husband was having multiple affairs but rather than parking in the scene and allowing us to see her process the information they just end the scene on the cliffhanger that they have something big to tell her and then continue with the next day when kim can walk in looking fresh and simply tell us what she was told in the last scene without ever showing her reaction to it it can't be worse than your last bombshell about the three affairs with women between 19 and an audience can only attach to a character if they understand them and that requires seeing them emotionally react to a variety of conflicts but the show seems hell-bent on keeping kim's character allura as someone to look at but not really relate to which is demonstrated once again when they want to show kim being angry that her receptionist is having an affair with her husband they say the eyes are the window to the soul so we really should be able to see the emotion in her eyes here but instead she shows up wearing sunglasses that take up more than half of her face and they then show her beating up a car with a baseball bat in what looks more like a badass music video than a woman tortured by an agonizing betrayal this is because all is fair uses kim more like a celebrity in a lifestyle commercial than an actual actress we get these vacuous lengthy sequences of her driving her car getting cosmetic procedures and walking through her mansion instead of moments that should show us who she really is or why any of this matters to her it's meant to be a legal drama yet in almost every shot of her you're kind of just waiting for a brand name to pop up on screen because it's shot like an advert which leads into the second issue kim's reactions you've probably heard the phrase acting is reacting as a character doesn't always need to be speaking to play their part in or even steal a scene their reactions are meant to tell us a lot about who they are and what they think and feel about what they've just heard but kim doesn't really react appropriately to what she's hearing like here glenn close delivers a monologue about how hard it is to watch her husband's health deteriorating naomi and nisi are sharing a sad expression to one another empathizing with glenn's speech but kim lifts her head and squints her eyes like she's posing for a photo and then looks to her co-stars with this stern expression seeming more judgmental than sympathetic she's not reacting to the emotional tone of the scene instead this looks like a random shot that would have been more fitting if it were spliced into a business negotiation then when her receptionist is explaining why she wants to be her to the point she had an affair with her husband kim just looks at her blinks and tilts her head like she's listening to a question in an interview engage with what she's saying kim this is meant to be an important scene for your character throughout the show her face is just too static and expressionless giving it this uncanny valley effect to the point that if we were told allura was actually an ai it would all make way more sense but as it stands these blank expressions actually drain each scene of any emotion it might have had as the speaker's performance has nothing to bounce off this is why it seems like the directors are avoiding kim in their storytelling despite her still being there i mean just look at this celebration sequence the camera intentionally puts the focus on the right side of the screen and starts to frame her absent face out of shot signaling that you could basically remove her from the scene and lose nothing whereas everyone else is engaging with the moment this happens quite often kim has a bad habit of just observing the actors performing next to her while contributing next to nothing herself the only thing she seems to be able to use to emote is her eyes and mouth and if there is one character trait if you could even call it that that she uses consistently it's this slowly blinking and then either rolling her eyes or looking at someone else which she does over and over and over and over again throughout the show basically using her lash extensions as a prop to exaggerate when she actually does something on camera having said that this does actually lead to her best reaction out of the four episodes i watched ready this is it want nothing more than have a baby and some of them can't and i could have now i know it doesn't look like much but here she's listening and reacting to a client discussing women who want to have kids but can't which her character can really relate to and i genuinely think she does a serviceable job of using a somber expression the reason this works more than anything else she does is because even though it's subtle she's being reflective and vulnerable i know it's not much but if she brought this attitude to every scene i would not be making this video because for the rest of the show she's either hollow and expressionless smiling as she jokes with her friends or just widening her eyes and mouth to which is a look that never really lands sometimes she unleashes it in basic conversation another time it's whipped out to express the horror of a client jumping to her death which should be a big moment but she still manages to look out of place here once again kim is being buttressed by two actors who are trying to carry her nisi is giving a big physical reaction while naomi looks genuinely horrified but kim is right in the middle just widening her eyes and mouth like she's on the poster of home alone rigidly standing there with her hand on her stomach her face is not selling us what just happened it feels more like a ridiculous reaction shot from reality tv then later when she does actually have something emotionally complicated to react to like hearing her receptionist is pregnant with her husband's baby we just get the same expression again except the production team add this vertigo effect by zooming in while tracking out to try to give the shot the impact her face obviously isn't capable of delivering and that leads into the final issue vocal delivery there are so many ways to deliver lines that can work soft-spoken aggressive confused funny deadpan cold but kim's delivery is incredibly lifeless there's no character personal motivation inner sense of self it's just empty and i'll do what i do best i'll change your ******* life i'm not saying the script is amazing or anything but so many actors could have pressed on this line much harder injecting it with personality and confidence whereas there's just this detachment from the words she's saying almost like she's solely focused on remembering the lines enough to say them but with no consideration for how they're actually going to sound compare that to sarah paulson who is unsurprisingly very good in this show half the income accrued thank you california plus any communal property they shared were those boys to get wind of this she stands to lose a lot more than the teeny tiny alimony we're asking for there's just a fluidity and confidence to sarah's speech that allows her to speak in these flowing paragraphs while kim can barely be trusted with a long sentence it feels like they had to write kim's character as someone incapable of expressing emotion just so she can get away with her instinctively monotonous delivery but that only works for so long as eventually the other characters logically have to say come on do something and you get mad or you're not gonna get through it which leads to the funniest or perhaps just most bizarre breakup scene i've ever witnessed think about what you expect from a breakup scene confusion anger loss bitterness a bit of a fight either to hold on to the relationship or to blame the other person for their failure in it something that speaks to how much this relationship has and does mean to you but kim never commits to the conflict which was a real opportunity to show a more open and vulnerable side to her outside of her public image instead she's hollow and you get no sense that she has any history with this man whatsoever you'd barely think they even rehearsed it i'm sorry i'm confused with what's going on here she could have done this so much better okay if she had just taken a moment to process this in her reaction first look down look lost look something then she could vulnerably state her confusion with what's going on here if she had done that we might have felt for her as she would have made us want to defend her as brian cranston outlines here people embrace someone who is in trouble someone who is vulnerable someone who is frightened we they they have a tendency to come forward but instead we get this talk to me are you just having a bad day or something the scene is obviously poorly written not allowing for much context but neither of them are finding a relationship dynamic here they're just two strangers saying words at one another you want a divorce what are you talking about it is hard to believe but this must have been the best take they got again it's this uncanny valley effect we're just not getting he said he wants a divorce out of nowhere this should be earth-shattering news she should be stewing in her emotions and she doesn't even have to show them all she can still do the whole putting on a brave face act but stutter over your words show me you're lost show me you're scared in this conversation or overthinking what this might mean for you fight for it or at the very least engage all she ends up showing us is this same blank expression and a single blink after hearing the news it just doesn't give us anything to relate to even if she wanted to just hold back her emotions that could still work as then the viewer would have something different to relate to as we've all experienced having to restrain our emotions while they're actively battling their way to the surface but instead of losing herself in the scene or the character kim never invites us to see a aspect of her inner self which i'm sure has to exist right and despite the show crudely working around her inability to emote it still just doesn't work she doesn't come across as a legal powerhouse or a betrayed wife or a loyal friend instead she's just playing the same character in the show that she portrays in the media wealthy vapid and superficial when this was a real opportunity to showcase another side to her maybe someone wholesome maybe someone funny maybe someone vulnerable maybe someone thoughtful but no instead she's just woman who likes products and look maybe she will improve if the show continues as there was that brief moment i mentioned earlier but somehow i doubt it as while the kardashians have been surrounded by cameras for decades it's mostly just been a way to show off their lifestyle and that's probably the biggest deterrent for kim to ever truly get good at acting as she has such a large personal brand centered around herself her image and her lifestyle that there's no real room need or maybe even desire to capture the essence of anyone else she doesn't want to be relatable and the end result is a robotic shell of a performance that never even gets out of first gear i feel like i'm in a dream how is this even happening right now am i that stupid well if you've made it this far firstly thank you for watching but if you could now give the video a like possibly even leave a comment and click on that subscribe button it will encourage that mysterious algorithm to do its thing