Jennifer Lawrence & Kylie Jenner Open Up About Having Security Around Their Kids
Serving as the interviewer, Jennifer — who is a self-proclaimed KarJenner superfan — quizzed Kylie on experiencing childhood in the spotlight, having first appeared on her family’s television show at just 9 years old.
“You’re being followed and you never had a choice. You were born into it,” Jennifer said, probing Kylie on her relationship with paparazzi and the public eye. “But I wonder if, in not needing to struggle so much, you didn’t have to have this hunger and this desperation.”
In response, Kylie said that while she’s grateful for the platform her fame has afforded her, dealing with the paparazzi has been “really hard,” as she went on to recount “horror stories” of being abused by photographers as a teen.
“Just, like, when I was 16 and these 50-year-old men were saying, ‘Hi, little slut’... Trying to shoot up my skirt and jumping out of the bushes, scaring me, blocking my car,” she recalled. “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.”
Of course, one major aspect of being so famous is ensuring safety — which is a topic that Jennifer was keen to discuss with the makeup mogul, particularly being that they’re both moms to young children.
“This might be too invasive of a question, but I’m curious how your kids react to security,” the Oscar winner asked, before admitting she “didn’t have that much security” before she had her son, Cy, in early 2022.
“With my intrusive thoughts and anxiety, I wanted us to have security around all the time,” Jennifer confessed, prompting Kylie to reveal she had a pretty similar experience.
“I was young when I got pregnant, but I never had security until I got pregnant,” she revealed, referring to her first pregnancy with her 5-year-old daughter Stormi in 2018. Her second child, a son named Aire, was born in February 2022.
“I have two security in rotation for them, and they have been with me for five-plus years,” Kylie added, revealing some rare insight into her setup as a mom of two.
She went on to say that Stormi has grown “very familiar” with the security teams, who Kylie encourages to act “normal” around her kids.
“She actually has a lot of love for them,” Kylie said of her daughter. “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.”
In agreement, Jennifer confessed that despite initially wanting her security to be as low-key as possible, she later realized it was better to encourage her son to develop a relationship with the people in their home.
“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,” she began. “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,” she added. “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.”
If you know much about Jennifer, you’ll know she maintains a very high level of privacy when it comes to her child, who’s around the same age as Kylie’s son Aire. And in the past, the actor has opened up about her concerns about raising kids in the public eye.
“I was so nervous when I was pregnant. I was getting paparazzi’d, and I was just like, ‘How the fuck am I not going to lose it on these guys when they’re taking a picture of my baby?’” she said during an interview with Cameron Diaz earlier this year. “Then once he was here, I realized that my energy is more important to him than anything else.”
“The best thing I can do is just make sure he knows he’s loved, and that he’s our number one priority, and try to be a good example of kindness,” she added. “I’m sure there will be challenges specifically from my choices and my lifestyle, and we’ll both have to confront that and deal with it when that day comes.”
