Kim Kardashian Remembers Breaking the Internet With PAPER

The paparazzi staple turned reality star turned lawyer turned fashion mogul turned Ryan Murphy muse turned Call Her Daddy podcast guest spoke to host Alex Cooper about her infamous "Break the Internet" cover in PAPER in 2014. In their chat about the magazine cover that redefined her image and simultaneously entered "break the internet" into the popular lexicon, Kardashian says the photo was entirely unplanned. "I pulled him aside and I was like, “Hey, like it's me. There's no publicist here. There's no one here. Like, you wanna shoot one, like one more like something other than just the this one shot?” And the one shot was I think the, the one with the glass on my butt."

As she tells it, she felt she wanted to "do something else," like "rip it off or like something." From there, they shot the nude photos, moving past the photo with just the glass on the butt, before she headed to dinner with momager Kris Jenner that night. "I go to dinner with my mom later. She's like, “How was the shoot?” And I was like, “Oh, it was good, whatever.” She opted out of telling her in the moment what really transpired, "and then when that shoot came out, I was living at my mom's house and I just remember her like screaming down the hall like, 'What did you do?'"

Kim explains that "I didn't think it was that big of a deal, you know? And she was pissed."

To date, the cover is an eternal benchmark for PAPER. It set a record at the time for the most site visits ever in one day, and 11 years later is still the most read post on our site to date. It drew international media attention, ranging from praise to outright protest, with everyone agreeing she had, at the very least, pushed the envelope well beyond the average expectation for an otherwise panned reality TV upstart.

It also heralded a new era of fashion media success for Kardashian, who went on to appear on numerous covers across the industry, repeatedly make headlines at the Met Gala, become a sort of must at the otherwise stuffy Vogue and its otherwise stuffy designer staples. It heralded an imperial phase for the Kardashians more broadly, preceding years of high ratings and wall-to-wall media frenzy.

Not to toot this magazine's horn more than I already have, but it's nice to know she considers it her favorite moment in her long career of making people extremely mad online.

The two also got into her bar exam test-taking: " I just took the bar in July. It was an experience. It was a lot... I took 4 months off to really focus on that and I didn't work on anything else and I just focused on studying and I took it and I am hoping for the best. Praying to God." She also said she thinks Kylie is her mom's favorite: "I think she's the baby and I think that, but I think it's warranted. I think she has a really close relationship with my mom and it's really sweet."

She also discussed her coparenting relationship with Kanye West — "Every time he has asked, I will always let them see their father" — and her new Ryan Murphy show. But like Kim Kardashian, I really only care about myself (and PAPER.) Listen to her full podcast episode to hear more.

Image Courtesy of Call Her Daddy