Love it or hate it, you cannot deny the success and impact Keeping Up With the Kardashians has had.

And it’s not up for debate.

The reality show has helped the family launch a global empire, as well as an absurdly profitable brand.

While the recipe might be questionable – one that consists of sex tapes, easily upgradable genes, famous boyfriends, social media access and a ridiculously driven mom – there’s no doubt they are currently at the top of their game and don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

But, as The Daily Beast suggests, their empire “also owes a good deal to those working behind the scenes”.

KUWTK debuted 10 years ago and one of the show’s most successful, yet almost secret, ingredient is Bunim/Murray, the entertainment production company that teamed up with Ryan Seacrest and E! to bring the Kardashians to television sets around the world.

Now, as talks hint at the end of the Kardashian decade, The Daily Beast spoke to Gil Goldschein, Chairman and CEO of Bunim/Murray, and Jeff Jenkins, the Co-President of Entertainment and Development:

Goldschein negotiated the original partnership with Ryan Seacrest Productions to produce Keeping Up With the Kardashians, while Jenkins continues to oversee the franchise as Executive Producer. More than ten years after Bunim/Murray got on board with Kris Jenner’s vision, we discussed Caitlyn Jenner, Kardashian spinoffs, painful moments on set and the art of oversharing.

Here are a few of the most interesting questions:

When did you realize that Keeping Up With the Kardashians was going to be something huge?

Goldschein: It’s interesting because every year I go to the international markets, and in the early days I was going around talking to different buyers in different territories ’cause we viewed [Keeping Up] as that reality Brady Brunch, and we thought, well, just like we have this U.S. version of this family, maybe…I was talking up the success of the Kardashian family and potentially trying to pitch them, hey, maybe you could let us do this version for you.

And I think it was probably season three or four where I would show up and see these huge billboards of the Kardashian family. So what was amazing was, starting again in season four or five, people all around the world… I mean, the Kardashians are now on the covers of magazines all around the world.

Kim Kardashian has talked about how she’ll often let the crew film something incredibly personal, thinking that she’ll just ask for it to be cut out of the final product, but that in the end she usually ends up approving the footage—that seems like the sort of commitment to sharing you’re describing.

Jenkins: Absolutely! I think Kim is so good in her role as a producer, and I think what you’re describing is, sometimes—not very often—but sometimes when we’re shooting something that’s very intense or incredibly personal, you know, Kim might share with the producers, “OK, you guys are filming but there’s no way that we can put this on TV,” and then, you know, she has trust in us, and faith in us, and we will take that material and shape it to the best of our ability in editing to make sure we’re accurately and fully sharing the family’s point of view.

And yes, 99 times out of 100, they go, “Oh, you know what, this is really great. This is really important.” As you can imagine, the time in between the day of shooting something incredibly vulnerable and the day that you see the completed episodes, there’s many, many weeks in between. So on the day you shoot something, you might be incredibly emotionally distraught and raw, but when you watch the edited content many weeks later, you’re maybe in a different headspace and have a bit more perspective.

I’ve been struck by how each spinoff seems to have an entirely different feel—like Life of Kylie, which just looks so different from KUWTK and is clearly trying to appeal to a different demographic. How much creative control do the family members have in their spinoffs?

Jenkins: I’m glad that you recognized the difference, and that really starts with Kylie. If you talk to Kylie, she’ll tell you, Keeping Up With the Kardashians started when she was 9, she didn’t even know what was going on, she didn’t really care.

And if you watch her in episodes of KUWTK, certainly when she’s an older teenager, she’s a bit reticent, she’s a bit short and curt, and she’s kind of holding her cards very close to her chest. With Life of Kylie, she really wanted to reveal herself for the first time on television.

So we really started from scratch working with her—what cameras are we gonna use, what music are we gonna use, what’s it gonna feel like…? And my hat is off to her, she’s so successful in her cosmetics career and her social media career, doing a show on cable television probably is not going to make or break her one way or another, and she really threw herself into it and did a great job.

Does anyone even talk about the ending of KUWTK? Or would that be jinxing it?

Jenkins: You know, right now, and I’ll let Gil have the last word, but right now we’re celebrating this ten-year anniversary, and my mantra is ten more years. So yes, I would like to see Mason get married, I would like to see Kris Jenner get married again, I would like to see Khloé get married, I would like to see Kourtney…uhh…smile. So those are my hopes for the next ten years.

Goldschein: That works for me. Another ten years.

Are you ready for another 10 years? I guess you don’t have much choice in the matter.

[source:dailybeast]