Jennifer Lawrence meets the mommy behind the mogul.
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MONDAY 12 PM OCT. 30, 2023 LA
JENNIFER LAWRENCE: Hey, my angel baby.
KYLIE JENNER: Hi!
LAWRENCE: My first-born. How are you?
JENNER: I miss you. Thank you for doing this. This makes my life.
LAWRENCE: It made my life. I’ve never said yes to something faster.
JENNER: No, seriously. And the fact that we missed each other in Paris—
LAWRENCE: I know. It’s a crime. Okay, I’ll jump right into it, and if you don’t like a question, just say no and I’ll never forgive you.
JENNER: Perfect.
LAWRENCE: Does anyone or anything inspire you?
JENNER: My mom inspires me, my family inspires me, and I’m trying to think of what else.
LAWRENCE: Do you ever take notes?
JENNER: I make notes if I’m getting inspiration. I’m online a lot. Also the haters fuel me.
LAWRENCE: That’s so Kim of you.
JENNER: [Laughs] Yeah.
LAWRENCE: Okay, little mogul. What is the best hire you’ve ever made?
JENNER: Probably my dog nanny, since I have seven dogs.
LAWRENCE: Why seven?
JENNER: [Laughs] Because they kept multiplying. One of them had children and I had to keep the family together.
LAWRENCE: You’re just like your mom. You have litters. I’ve been watching the show since I was, not to date myself, 14, so I would say I know everything about your family.
JENNER: Stop! That must have been season one. I was 9. Do you remember me on the stripper pole?
LAWRENCE: Of course I remember you on the stripper pole with your little, what were they? Yorkies?
JENNER: I don’t remember.
LAWRENCE: Well, they were little dogs and they used to bark while you were on the stripper pole.
JENNER: Probably my chihuahua. That’s so funny.
LAWRENCE: But what strikes me is that you guys are arguably the closest family in the world for emotional reasons, and then also a lot of very good multimillion-dollar reasons. I think it’s wonderful, but I can also imagine that it’s really hard. Like in the latest episode with Kim and Kourtney, in a normal family, you’d be like, “Okay, we don’t really see eye to eye on anything and it’s causing us both stress. I love you. I’ll see you at Christmas.” But you guys can’t ever do that. You can’t really ever take space. What is that like?
JENNER: We can’t really take space because we work together. But at the end of the day, we are all obsessed with each other and would probably choose each other as friends if we weren’t family.
LAWRENCE: You think Kourtney would?
JENNER: I do.
LAWRENCE: Okay. We agree to disagree.
JENNER: [Laughs] It’s hard to find people who understand your life. It’s such a rare thing that we’re all going through in this business and with fame, so to have each other to lean on has been really important and the reason why I’ve been able to stay humble.
LAWRENCE: I mean, the other edge of this sword is really painful and hard. Like having to battle paparazzi from such a young age, which is something that for me, as a 30-year-old woman, is hard. You’re being followed and you never had a choice. You were born into it. But I wonder if, in not needing to struggle so much, you didn’t have to have this hunger and this desperation. Sometimes when I work with actors, the ones that struggled the most before are the biggest nightmares. I won’t say it came easy because I’m sure being accepted into the fashion world and having to deal with the power of your influence mixed with people going, “Well, you’re this and you’re only this,” was difficult—
JENNER: Yeah, it’s a challenge, breaking through that. But I’ve had such an amazing platform and I choose to put in the work. I could have been handed the same gift and decided not to do anything with it, but I took advantage of this amazing opportunity. But with the paparazzi, it’s been really hard. I’ve had some horror stories.
LAWRENCE: Would you like to tell them?
JENNER: Just, like, when I was 16 and these 50-year-old men were saying, “Hi, little slut,” and—
LAWRENCE: Oh my god.
JENNER: Trying to shoot up my skirt and jumping out of the bushes, scaring me, blocking my car. It was actually worse when I was younger. But I don’t really know what it would be like to grow up not in the spotlight, and that’s helped me because I have nothing to refer back to.
LAWRENCE: Yeah, you just got to develop in a loving family surrounded by people who are going through the exact same thing. Maybe that’s why you’re so sweet.
JENNER: Thank you.
LAWRENCE: Which of your sisters is closest to Stormi [Jenner’s daughter]?
JENNER: Khloe.
LAWRENCE: Well, Khloe’s everybody’s mother. I want her to be my son’s mother.
JENNER: She’s everyone’s second mother. She was my second mother. So to see Stormi have that same relationship with Khloe, it warms my heart every time.
LAWRENCE: When you guys were pregnant at the same time, I cried.
JENNER: I know. We never saw that coming. You can’t make this shit up.
LAWRENCE: Did you like being pregnant?
JENNER: I really did.
LAWRENCE: Now that I’m far away from it I really liked it too. I had an easy pregnancy.
JENNER: The second one took me out. But you either love it or you don’t.
LAWRENCE: Yeah. But you and Kendall are so different. You and me are Leos. We’re happy, excited golden retrievers. And Kendall, of course, is a Scorpio like our mother, Kris.
JENNER: Yes.
LAWRENCE: What are the differences that bring you guys closer and what are the differences that are more difficult to navigate?
JENNER: Her bonding with Stormi has brought us closer. We both have this strong presence and personality, but that’s not a bad thing.
LAWRENCE: And you guys aren’t really ever vying for the same thing.
JENNER: We’re so different between our style and our personality.
LAWRENCE: Yeah. Walk me through a normal morning for you. What is the first hour of you waking up at home?
JENNER: Coffee immediately.
LAWRENCE: How do you get your coffee? Do you go downstairs and get it? Does somebody bring it to you?
JENNER: I love these questions. I get my coffee from Kings Road Café.
LAWRENCE: You walk to Kings Road?
JENNER: No, no, no. Of course not.
LAWRENCE: So it’s waiting in your kitchen? Or it’s waiting outside your bedroom door.
JENNER: It’s waiting in my kitchen. [Laughs]
LAWRENCE: Okay, great. Thank you.
JENNER: Sometimes if I’ve, like, had a long night, my coffee will appear next to my bed.
LAWRENCE: Oh, bless that person.
JENNER: It’s usually one of my kids bringing it in, though.
LAWRENCE: Oh, that’s really cute. How do you take your coffee?
JENNER: I love a vanilla almond milk.
LAWRENCE: Oh, okay. Then I do too. Meghan, make a note.
JENNER: Yep.
LAWRENCE: I thought that Meghan was on the Zoom. Meghan is my assistant, but I realized that I’m Meghan. [Laughs]
JENNER: Oh my god. So it’s coffee, kids. I’m either taking Stormi to school or rushing to work somewhere or making pancakes. My kids love my pancakes. “Mommy’s potatoes” is what they call it.
LAWRENCE: That’s so cute. What do you tell them Mommy does for work?
JENNER: Mommy makes makeup.
LAWRENCE: Oh, wow. Mommy does make makeup.
JENNER: Stormi was playing with my makeup yesterday. She loves putting on a red lip every once in a while.
LAWRENCE: Hell yeah.
JENNER: Just around the house, obviously. And I like to always show her my name’s on the lipstick. I’m like, “This is Mommy’s lipstick. Your mom’s really cool.”
LAWRENCE: She sure is.
JENNER: My son is too young to know what’s going on, but I told Stormi that Mommy makes clothes now. I have my Khy collection coming out and I made her all mini-versions of all the pieces from our first drop. I like her to be involved in everything that I do, and I’m always doing special things for her.
LAWRENCE: Oh, that’s so fun. And what a great way to show her that you love what you do. This might be too invasive of a question, butI’m curious how your kids react to security. I didn’t have that much security before I had a kid but, once I had one, with my intrusive thoughts and anxiety, I wanted us to have security around all the time.
JENNER: Yeah, I had the same experience. I was young when I got pregnant, but I never had security until I got pregnant. I have two security in rotation for them and they have been with me for five-plus years. She’s very familiar with them, which I feel comfortable with. She actually has a lot of love for them. I just tell my security to not make it so serious, so they have a good relationship. I’m trying to figure it out too because I never had security growing up, so I don’t know what that’s like, but I try to make it as normal and friendly as possible.
LAWRENCE: Yeah, friendly is nice because before I hired them, in my mind I was like, I want them to be invisible. I don’t want my kid to see you or know you. And then once they start working for you, it’s like, “Well, wait. This is a person in our life. He’s helping us.” That’s not really a good lesson to ignore the person that’s helping us. It’s probably better to say, “Say good morning to Sean. Hi. How are you?” We’ve incorporated them more in our lives, which surprised me. That wasn’t how I planned it.
JENNER: Yeah. And as your son gets older, he’s going to have a bigger personality. He’s going to end up just doing what he wants.
LAWRENCE: Yeah. He’d be like,“Who’s that guy following us?” Back to business, since you are arguably one of the most successful business women who’s ever lived. When you brought contouring lips into the mainstream, was that something that you learned from a makeup artist or were you doing that technique yourself?
JENNER: I think it started because I just wanted big, fat, juicy lips, and I just wanted that illusion that I had fuller lips. But no one taught me. When I started doing that, I wasn’t really working with makeup artists and stuff
LAWRENCE: Wow. That’s really, really cool. And I also think it’s incredible what makeup can do because I work with Hung [Vanngo], who overlines the lip, and I call him a plastic surgeon, because everybody in the last few months since I’ve been working with him is convinced that I had eye surgery.
JENNER: Stop.
LAWRENCE: I’m like, “I didn’t have eye surgery. I’m doing makeup.”
JENNER: Oh my god. You know, you’ve been looking amazing. Have you always worked with him?
LAWRENCE: Well, apparently I’ve had full plastic surgery. [Laughs]
JENNER: No, I’ve been seeing the pictures. It doesn’t look like that.
LAWRENCE: Oh, thank you.
JENNER: But yeah, it is amazing what makeup can do.
LAWRENCE: Yeah, I feel sorry for men. They’re kind of stuck with what they have.
JENNER: I did end up getting lip fillers, but it’s also the same with me. I’ll see before and after photos when I’m 12 years old versus 26 and my eyebrows are filled differently. I have contour on. I’m like,“How can you compare my 12-year-old face and say I’ve gotten my jaw shaved and eyelids removed?” I’m like, “What are we talking about?”
LAWRENCE: I have the same thing. I started at 19, so I get the before and after pictures from when I’m 19 to 30 and I’m like, “I grew up. I lost baby weight in my face, and my face changed because I’m aging.” Everybody thought I had a nose job, and I’m like, “I’ve had the exact same nose. My cheeks got smaller. Thank you for bringing it up.” What was the hardest part of transitioning from the beauty industry to the fashion industry?
JENNER: It wasn’t that hard. I’ve always loved both, and I think they go hand in hand. Especially when I’m doing red carpets or picking major events and outfits, I think that the makeup and the hair can make or break your look or just give it different energy or take it to another level.
LAWRENCE: I agree. It’s a symphony. It all has to work together. And you just have that eye. You were a young teenager that was experimenting with your own makeup. What was the biggest challenge from taking that to actual reality? Because a lot of people think that influence makes everything easier, but a lot of times it can obviously be a hindrance.
JENNER: Yeah, I agree. Proving people wrong was a challenge, but so was building it from the ground up. It was me and my mom and we never made a makeup line. We didn’t know where to start. We didn’t have anyone helping us. And my mom thought I was going to be stuck with lip kits in my garage for the rest of my life. I think we ordered 5,000 of each color; that was the minimum. And she was like, “You better be ready, Kylie, because you might have a lot of lip kits in your garage for the rest of your life, so you better love these colors.”
LAWRENCE: And then you shut down the entire internet. It broke.
JENNER: And then it broke in two seconds, and that’s when we were like, “Okay, how do we do this? How do we make these faster and better?” We got in my mom’s car and drove all over California and visited all these factories. Finding the best manufacturer was difficult. We were a new company, so growing in front of a lot of people was hard. You don’t have room to make mistakes. But it wasn’t a bad thing. It was so successful and it was the best time of my life.
LAWRENCE: That’s so funny. I didn’t think about that because every single person makes mistakes. Especially in business, you make a mistake. But for you, if you made a mistake, it was because you’re young or because you’re a girl or because you shouldn’t be doing that.
JENNER: Yeah, it was a challenge.
LAWRENCE: I have two last questions. Do you think that you have greyhound dogs because they remind you of Kendall?
JENNER: [Laughs] Yes, that’s a part of it. I love seeing little Kendalls run around, and I think they’re just funny. They just make me smile. I was never, like, a Shih Tzu Pomeranian type of girl.
LAWRENCE: No, not fluffy.
JENNER: I need them skinny and fast.
LAWRENCE: Yeah, totally. I had a half–Italian greyhound chihuahua and I used to call her my Kendall Jenner.
JENNER: Stop. I need to see pictures.
LAWRENCE: I’ll send them to you. My last question is a little intense, but we all want to know. Obviously, there was a huge trauma many years ago, but we’ve recently seen that you are friends with Jordyn [Woods] again. How is that? How did that happen? What up?
JENNER: Jordyn and I, we always stayed in touch throughout the years and we would meet up at my house and catch up and just talk through everything. We never fully cut each other off, and one day, naturally, we were like, we want to get sushi and we don’t want to hide anymore. There’s a learning lesson in everything, and I think that in a weird way, everything happens how it’s supposed to happen. We were so attached at the hip that we needed space to grow into the people that we were supposed to be. I needed that independence and that confidence because she was like my security blanket for so long.
LAWRENCE: I get that and I’m happy that you still have that in a healthier way. She was so young and she made a mistake, but those lifetime friends are very important.
JENNER: Yeah, I agree.
LAWRENCE: Well, that’s all I have for you.
JENNER: Thank you so much.
LAWRENCE: I love you so much.
JENNER: I love you. I need to see you in Palm Springs. Thank you for doing this. Seriously.
LAWRENCE: Yeah, of course. I was so happy to.
JENNER: Okay, yay. And I hope to see you soon.
LAWRENCE: Alright, you too. Bye.
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Hair: Jesus Guerrero at The Wall Group.
Makeup: Ariel Tejada at PRTNRS.
Nails: Zola Ganzorigt using OPI at The Wall Group.
Set Design: Patience Harding at New School Represents.
Lighting Direction: Victor Grössling.
Digital Technician: Aron Norman.
Tailor: M’Lynn Hass.
Production: The Morrison Group.
Production Management: Christina Najar.
Post-production: Theo Liu Studio.
Photography Assistants: Stefy Lin and Max Wilbur.
Fashion Assistants: Jaiin Kang, Mattie Tiggleman, and Emma Oleck.
Hair Assistant: Jinju Bae.
Set Assistants: Bradford Schroeder and Emahn Ray.
Production Assistants: Jai Wilson, Jordan Mack, and Briggs Mroz.
Location: Jessamyn’s Winding Creek.
Animals: Paws For Effect.
Special Thanks: Arrow Rentals and L’Ermitage Beverly Hills.