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I’ve been writing about royals and celebrities for 20 years. I’ve sat across from enough of them in interview rooms to know when someone is performing and when they’re being real. The ones I couldn’t get to, I wrote gossip about instead. Along the way I’ve worked for MailOnline, CNN, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and a string of other publications that have between them covered just about every major celebrity story of the last two decades. I say all of this not to boast, but because it gives me some basis for what I’m about to argue.

For nearly two decades, the Kardashians have dominated our TV screens. Somehow, against all odds, they’ve kept themselves relevant while doing it. People love to class them as full-blown A-listers, but let’s be honest. They’ve only just nudged into that bracket, and they’re sitting firmly at the bottom of it. They’re no Angelina Jolie or Marilyn Monroe (although Kim has tried), that’s for sure.

But here’s the thing. They survived. When reality television’s golden age started crumbling, the Kardashians didn’t go with it. When a wave of influencers came along and copied their entire playbook, they adapted. While other stars from that era quietly disappeared from the conversation, this family somehow refused to leave it. Until now, perhaps. Because 2026 feels different.

There’s been a lot of chatter recently about Kendall Jenner and actor Jacob Elordi. The pair were spotted on a rather loved-up holiday in Hawaii last week, one they clearly didn’t want anyone talking about, which of course meant everyone immediately started talking about it.

And then there’s Kylie, whose relationship with Oscar-nominated Timothée Chalamet has been drawing attention from every corner of the internet for months now.

Taken at face value, these are just celebrity relationships. Famous people dating famous people which is hardly front-page news on its own. But I think they point to something a bit more interesting than that. The Kardashians might be losing their center of gravity.

For years, it was Kim who held the whole thing together. Her relationships weren’t just tabloid fodder but cultural events. Kanye West turned her into a fashion icon. Pete Davidson made her feel contemporary again at a moment when she needed it. And now Lewis Hamilton, one of the most decorated sportsmen on the planet, has her back in the conversation in a way that feels genuinely global. Kim has always understood, perhaps better than anyone in her family, that who you’re seen with is as powerful a statement as anything you could say or do yourself.

But relationships can only carry you so far. Which is perhaps why Kim has spent the last few years furiously adding strings to her bow with acting roles here, a serious business empire there, and a very public journey towards becoming a lawyer that she has pursued with the kind of relentless energy that’s hard not to respect, even if the cynics roll their eyes. She’s approaching her late 40s and she knows it. There’s a franticness to it, if you look closely enough, she’s a woman who has spent her entire adult life at the center of everything, scrambling to make sure she stays there. The question is whether any of it will stick.

And then there are the quiet ones. Kourtney, Khloé and Rob have always occupied an odd space in this family. Just present enough to be recognizable, but rarely generating the kind of heat that Kim, Kendall or even Kylie can produce on a slow news day. Dull as dishwater, some would say, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong. But that very ordinariness is, I suspect, precisely why they resonate with such a large chunk of their audience. Not everyone wants to watch someone living a life completely beyond imagination. Sometimes people just want to see something that feels vaguely adjacent to their own.

Think about the kind of relationships this family was associated with even five or six years ago. Rappers. NBA stars. Reality TV personalities. People who were already operating inside the same bubble. The Kardashians were the bubble. Everyone else was trying to get in.

What’s different now is that the two most talked-about relationships in the family involve serious, critically respected actors. Chalamet isn’t just famous. He’s genuinely regarded as one of the best performers of his generation. Elordi has spent years quietly shaking off the teen drama label and landing roles that demand people take him seriously.

I want to be clear: that’s not a dig at Kendall or Kylie. If anything, it’s a testament to how well this family reads where culture is heading. They’ve always had that instinct.

But it also tells you something. There was a time when the Kardashian name was the most powerful currency in celebrity. You didn’t need to borrow prestige from anywhere else because you were already sitting on top of it. Now? It feels like the family is reaching towards Hollywood rather than the other way around.

The stories used to come from inside. The drama, the relationships, the business moves, the fallouts, and it was all self-generating. The Kardashian universe created its own news. But when Kylie and Chalamet land on the front page, a fair chunk of that interest is coming from his orbit, not hers.

Same with Kendall and Elordi. That’s not irrelevance. I’d push back hard on anyone calling it that. It’s something subtler, and in some ways more difficult to fix. Boredom. We’re bored of the Kardashians! It’s as simple as that.

Not outright dislike. Not scandal because they’ve survived enough of those. Just a low-level fatigue that tends to creep up on any franchise that’s been running long enough. The original show worked because it felt unfiltered. Chaotic. A bit all-over-the-place in the best possible way. The Hulu series is polished to within an inch of its life. It’s impressive, professionally speaking. But polished and gripping aren’t the same thing, and that gap has started to show.

The family spent years chasing respectability, and they got it. Kim built a billion-dollar business. Kylie turned a lip kit into an empire. Kendall became one of the highest-paid models on the planet. By any reasonable measure, these are serious achievements.

The irony is that achieving all of that might have cost them the one thing that made people obsessively tune in every week.

A large part of the credit or the blame, depending on your perspective, belongs to Kris Jenner. If you want to understand how this family climbed to where it did and stayed there, you have to understand her. She is, without question, one of the most formidable stage mothers in the history of entertainment. Baby Jane Hudson’s mother would look like a laid-back bystander by comparison. Kris has pushed, positioned and packaged her children with a single-minded focus that is frankly staggering. It has worked. Brilliantly, at times. But even Kris Jenner can’t manufacture cultural relevance indefinitely. The question that’s been nagging at me lately is whether she has finally reached the limits of what she can engineer or are her grandchildren next?

None of this is a knell. I’d never bet against this family. People have been writing their obituaries for 15 years and have looked foolish every time. Kris, above anyone else in that circle, knows how to read a room and recalibrate before the door closes.

But something has definitely shifted. For years the Kardashians were the destination. The whole of celebrity culture arranged itself around them in some way or another. These days, they seem to be the ones angling for a seat at someone else’s table.

Maybe that turns out to be the smartest move they’ve ever made. Maybe Hollywood is exactly where this story goes next. Either way, it’s the first time in a long time that the Kardashian name on its own doesn’t feel like the whole story.

And that, more than any paparazzi shot in Hawaii, is what’s really worth paying attention to.