I don’t know you personally, but I’m relatively certain that your life is not like Kim Kardashian‘s life. She has many fingers in many, many pies and her life is well past the point where it can be managed by one person. Enter Stephanie Shepherd.
Stephanie Shepherd is Kim’s executive assistant. You might have seen her in fleeting glimpses in the background of ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians‘ and in the background of photos. She is the woman who is in charge of making sure Kim’s life runs smoothly. She’s also (at least, compared to everyone else in the Kardashian family) shrouded in mystery.
But wonder no more about Shepherd’s extremely unique life, thanks to a tell-all interview she did with Refinery29, in which she spoke about what the job is like, how she got it, how funny Kanye is, and how she makes sure they have weed-themed stuff for the “kids“.
Despite now being bananas rich and also close friends with objectively one of the most famous people in the world, Shepherd says she comes from pretty humble beginnings:
“When I say I came from a small town, I mean that I would pass cows driving to school. It was country life: bonfires and football games. Our nicest restaurant was Olive Garden. So when I came out here, it was a whole different thing. I had never seen a Range Rover. I hadn’t really travelled, I didn’t know what Givenchy was or how to pronounce it.”
She moved to LA in 2009 after working as a dancer for the Cleveland Cavaliers, following which she got a job working as an assistant for choreographer Mikey Minden and future Real Housewife Erika Girardi, alongside occasional backup dancer jobs for artists like Pitbull. Because Hollywood is an extremely strange place, she was suggested for the job as Kim’s assistant in 2013 by Pussycat Dolls founder Robin Antin.
The interview (conducted at Kim’s house) was v. chill, with Shepherd’s solution not in a small part due to her hair:
“She had no makeup on and was in her sweats, super pregnant with North. She was just like, ‘Look, I need help, Robin loves you and says great things about you; this is what I need. Can you do it?‘ And I was like, ‘Okay, sure, I can do that — and if I can’t, I’ll figure it out!‘ Meanwhile in my head, I was so nervous. Coincidentally we were both wearing French braids…Kim later told me she was thinking ‘This girl has good vibes and a braid, I’m into her!‘”
At first, her job involved doing pretty much everything, although they’ve since taken on more staff:
“I was doing her whole schedule, doing her laundry, booking travel, putting the stroller together and all of these things. But I wasn’t nervous. I was just excited, always staying longer than I needed because I was trying to prove myself — and then North came early! I was a brand new assistant who had no idea what to do with a baby, but we all moved into Kris‘ house, and she was the one who made it all feel okay and moved mountains for us. Four years later, Kim now also has a personal assistant, a house assistant, two kids, two nannies.”
Mostly, though, the job seems to involve being Kim’s best friend. The two are in contact pretty much every waking hour of every day:
“Obviously Kim and I text all day every day, from the second we wake up until we go to bed. … I’ll text Kim and her assistant Michael to say, ‘Hey guys, I’m off the grid in yoga for the next hour,‘ just so they know where I am in case the world ends in those 60 minutes. But that one hour is me time.”
And that friendship extends to the rest of the family:
“Kendall and Kylie, we have some of the same friends, so we’ll go out together and have that relationship. Khloe is just like everybody’s friend, you can talk to her about anything, she’s just a down ass girl, truly. And then Kourtney and I weren’t really close at all when I first started working — I don’t think she really liked me at first to be honest!“But I think when we were doing that world tour of Miami and Iceland and all those places, with so much travel time, we bonded. Now we talk all the time and we’ll go to dinner, or I’ll spend the night at her house.”
Apparently, she is also required to literally keep up with the Kardashians, exercise-wise:
“Being around Kim and Kourtney and Khloe, I’m always working out. I never was a big exercise person before, but they work out religiously. So I’ll drive to Calabasas and work out with Kourtney or with Kim here and there, and now I’m on Class Pass so I can take classes, like yoga or Barry’s Bootcamp and Pilates and Spin.”
Maybe the biggest revelation from the piece is that Kanye is a big ol’ joker, which seems to run contrary to his refusal to smile:
“I think people would be surprised to know how funny Kanye is. Do people know that he’s funny? I know everyone thinks he’s so deep and serious, but he’s also so funny, like he has me rolling laughing, and sometimes I’m like, Is this inappropriate that I’m laughing so hard? But he’s just so fucking hilarious, he has these one-liners, and he’s just so unfiltered. He makes me laugh so hard, but he’s also truly the hardest-working man I’ve ever met.”
It’s a very in-depth interview and you can check out the whole thing here.
Source: Refinery29.
Photo: Instagram / @steph_shep.
