Ye apparently flew on the bus on a commercial flight so he could support his ex-wife’s SNL debut.
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For the past few months, Kim Kardashian’s relationship with her ex-husband Kanye West has been rocky, to say the least.
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After he first filed for divorce from the rapper, who legally changed his name to Ye, in February 2021, tensions didn’t come to a head until January of this year.
He even claimed that she keeps him away from her four children, sharing private text messages Kim sent as a direct result of Ye’s public attacks expressing concerns for Pete’s safety.
While Kim and Pete rarely responded, Ye relentlessly posted about them from January through March 17, when Instagram temporarily disabled his account for using a racial slur against Trevor Noah in a separate post. The ban was only for 24 hours, but Ye has yet to return to social media.
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If you keep the past three months in mind, you’ll forget that Kim and Yes’ divorce last year was mostly amicable, with Kim even wearing a wedding dress onstage for his Donda album launch party in August.
And just as she supported his work ventures, Ye was also a supporter of hers, and their relationship didn’t seem sour until Kim began dating comic Pete Davidson in October — shortly after appearing on Saturday Night Live.
The backstory has now been revealed on Kim’s new family reality show, The Kardashians, which premiered on Hulu last week.
In this week’s episode, Kim offered viewers a behind-the-scenes look at her SNL stint, as well as her relationship with Ye, as she revealed the extreme measures he took to allow him to be in New York to personally support her.
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In fact, Ye stayed up all night traveling on a scheduled airliner bus to be there for Kim, collaborating with her and comics Dave Chappelle and Michelle Wolf on jokes for her opening monologue.
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Speaking to her publicist and friend Tracy Romulus while preparing for the show, Kim said, “He’s already here, he literally took a commercial bus flight, sat in the seat by the bathroom.”
“He said he didn’t sleep all night just so he could be in town early enough to meet up with Dave and joke around and really help out,” she continued.
“I can’t believe he’s helping the way he is,” Tracy replied.
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Kim provided even more insight into her and Ye’s relationship during a confessional, where she admitted she had set “serious boundaries” to make it clear to Ye that they will not get back together.
“Kanye is in New York to support me, but we also set some serious boundaries,” she told the camera. “Kanye and I stay in separate hotels, I’ve made it very clear to him where we stand in our relationship.”
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“Super drama-free is the mood for this week,” she added.
Consistent with this, Kim was later seen telling SNL’s producers to remove certain jokes about Ye from the episode’s script, as she was concerned about hurting his feelings.
Kim explained that her divorce was a touchy subject for Ye, so she didn’t want to refer to it too often.
Reviewing the script, Kim told SNL producer Lindsay Shookus, “The divorce is so delicate for him and I’m already saying that part in the monologue…”
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“I know he would want to be a part of it because he would love it,” Kim continued, and Tracy finished, “It shouldn’t be disrespectful to him.”
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Kim added in a confessional: “I’m always scared of hurting people’s feelings and I would never go in and make fun of, especially my children’s father. That doesn’t mean we don’t have a lot of love and respect for each other because we didn’t make it.”
Though Kim insisted she had set boundaries and she scaled back the number of divorce references made in the episode, Ye expressed his bewilderment at the gags just weeks after the live show aired.
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Speaking on the Drink Champs podcast in November, Ye referred to Kim as his wife, as he claimed producers had them say they were divorced.
“SNL got my wife to say I divorced him because they just wanted to get rid of that pole and I didn’t even see the papers, we’re not even divorced,” Ye said at the time. “This is no joke to me. My children want their parents to stay together. I want us to be together.”
The following month, Kim petitioned to be “legally single” when she told the court that Ye had not responded to “repeated requests” to officially end their marriage. Yes Camp initially denied the request, but Kim’s request was granted when she resubmitted in February this year.
Elsewhere on SNL, Kim took part in an Aladdin skit with Pete, who she was spotted on a date with just weeks later. In the sketch, Pete played Aladdin and she played Princess Jasmine, with the two stars kissing on camera.
Ye hit back at the Disney skit earlier this year when he claimed to Hollywood Unlocked that Kim tried to “annoy him through games”.
“How do you take me to SNL and then kiss the guy you’re dating right in front of me and everyone’s like, ‘Oh, that’s cool’?” Ye asked.
Kim has claimed that she was single when she hosted the show and even said that she and Pete didn’t manage to connect backstage at SNL because he was the only cast member who refused to be for The Kardashians being filmed.
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“That day he came and we did a dress rehearsal and then the right thing,” Kim said of her sketch during a recent appearance on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast. “So the whole time I was rehearsing, it was with a substitute.”
“When we kissed, I was like ‘hmm,'” Kim revealed. “It was a stage kiss, but it was still like a little bit… bitchy, you know? It wasn’t a super crazy feeling, I was just like ‘hmm’.”
Kim insisted she initially dismissed the spark, but later decided to take the plunge from dating someone new — eight months after filing for divorce.
While he’s still off-screen, Ye’s involvement in Kim’s SNL appearance isn’t his first mention on the new reality show.
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Last week’s debut episode showed Kim Ye calling in tears after her 6-year-old son Saint saw an ad teasing unreleased footage of her and Ray J’s infamous sextape while playing on Roblox.
Meanwhile, Kim has confirmed that while Pete wasn’t filmed for the show, viewers can still see how their relationship came about in the upcoming episodes.
Catch new episodes of The Kardashians on Thursdays on Hulu and on Disney+ outside the United States.
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