Kylie Jenner took the witness stand Monday at Blac Chyna’s $100 million defamation trial against four of the Kardashian-Jenner women — and it was a sight to behold.
The millionaire makeup mogul, 24, was unflappable, filling her answers with drawn-out “yeahs” and “ums” as she became the first sibling to face a barrage of questions over whether she conspired with her mom Kris Jenner and sisters Khloé and Kim Kardashian to defame Chyna, her brother’s former fiancé, and sink the volatile ex-couple’s E! reality show Rob & Chyna.
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As Chyna’s lawyer, Lynne Ciani, grilled her over everything from her past relationship with Tyga, the rapper who shares a son with Chyna, to the night Chyna and Rob allegedly had a blowout fight inside one of her extra Hidden Hills homes, Kylie stared the lawyer down and regularly repeated her questions back to her before answering them at a leisurely pace.
“You believed Chyna had slashed your boyfriend Tyga’s arm with a knife, correct?” Ciani asked.
“That’s what I heard, yeah,” the youngest Kardashian-Jenner sibling, who now shares two children with rapper Travis Scott, responded.
“And then at some point do you believe that Chyna physically threatened you in any way?” Ciani asked.
“Physically threatened me?,” Kylie repeated, taking time to mull the question in her head. “I remember one time I woke up to some texts from Chyna, some threatening texts, yeah. From what I remember, she sent me a bunch of devil emojis and said something along the lines of like, ‘counting down the days’ to either beat me, or, I don’t know exactly what she meant.”
Dressed in an oversized, satin-style brown suit, Kylie said the texts were on “a very old phone,” so she no longer has them. She didn’t report them to the police, she said.
“I took it as an empty threat, really. Tyga expressed to me a lot about her abuse with the drugs and the alcohol, so I honestly assumed she was probably high because I got the text really early in the morning,” she testified.
“At time you learned that your brother was going to have a baby with Chyna, did the fact that you believed your boyfriend Tyga had been slashed with a knife by [Chyna] affect your reaction to the news?” Ciani asked.
“Um,” she said, again taking her time. “When I learned about the slashing it was way before the pregnancy, so no, it wasn’t in my mind at the time.” She clarified she was 18 years old when Rob and Chyna announced they were expecting a child in 2016.
“Did you welcome Chyna into the family around the time when you learned that she was going to be having a baby with your brother?” the lawyer asked.
“Did I welcome her? Yeah. I think that we had an OK relationship for a while. I actually wanted to be cool with Chyna. I felt like I spent a lot of time with her son and despite everything, I actually did want it to work out for my brother,” she said.
Kylie said her patience for the relationship ran out after she met Rob at her house and saw that Chyna, whose legal name is Angela White, had damaged a door and smashed a TV during a fight with Rob on the morning of Dec. 15, 2016.
Chyna testified earlier in the trial that’s now playing out in downtown Los Angeles that she never laid a finger on Rob and only damaged the door and TV out of frustration because Rob had stolen her phone and locked himself in a closet with it.
Kylie testified Monday that her brother reported to her that Chyna had viciously attacked him.
“I remember my brother telling me Chyna held a gun to his head, she strangled him with an iPhone cord. I think he was informing me that my door was damaged, and my TV, and that Chyna had been drinking a lot and maybe doing some drugs. That’s what he told me,” Kylie testified.
“I mean, he used the words, ‘She was trying to kill me.’ That’s what he said to me. I assumed, yeah, that it was a death struggle. If someone’s saying, ‘She was trying to kill me,’ that’s what I assume, but I don’t think he said those words,” she said.
“You believe Chyna’s professed love for your brother was fake?” Ciani asked at one point.
“Did I think her love was fake? I remember definitely feeling like that after my brother told me what happened that night. I didn’t know how somebody could do that to someone and love them,” she testified.
“Before that incident, did you believe that Chyna’s love for your brother was genuine?” Ciani asked.
“I just felt like maybe me dating the father of her child maybe had something — maybe she was just with my brother for other reasons. I don’t know. That’s just my opinion,” she said.
“So your opinion from the start was that you believed that Chyna was just getting together with your brother Rob out of spite?” Ciani asked.
“I was hoping not, to be honest. I was hoping no, for my brother,” she said.
“But that is how you felt,” Ciani clarified.
“Um, maybe,” Kylie said.
According to Chyna’s lawsuit, Kylie, Kim, Kris and Khloé joined forces to sink her reality TV career because they didn’t consider her a suitable spouse for Rob and resented the success of Rob & Chyna, which she claims was a more authentic version of a reality show. Chyna claims they defamed her by falsely claiming she physically attacked Rob.
Before Kylie was called to the stand Monday, former E! executive Jeff Olde testified via video that he didn’t rely on the family’s resistance to Rob & Chyna when he voted not to pick up a second season. He held his ground when confronted with back-to-back emails he received from Kylie and Khloé on Dec. 20, 2016 in which the sisters pleaded with him to cancel the spin-off from the main Keeping Up With the Kardashians show.
“After what we all witnessed over the weekend, I feel very strongly about canceling Season 2 for Rob & Chyna. The only reason Chyna wants to be with my brother is for this show. She does not love Rob and their relationship is too fake and destructive. If we really all love Rob we need to all come together and protect him,” Kylie wrote in the message. “The show is giving this toxic woman money and exposure she lives and breathes for and by continuing it… she will proceed with using and physically abusing my brother.”
Khloé’s follow-up email said: “The sisters are clearly concerned and uncomfortable for our brother’s safety and the credibility of the brand at this point due to how they are both tarnishing it. We don’t feel comfortable encouraging such volatile behavior and if we can put our foot down in any way we believe it’s our job to do so. We are even considering not moving forward with our show if theirs continues. That’s how strongly we feel this is damaging to our family.”
Olde testified Monday that his faith in the show cratered when it lost the “romantic,” “fun” and “aspirational” themes that caused him to recommend it to the network in the first place. He claimed he wasn’t swayed by the Kardashian-Jenner women threatening to pull their plug on their entire franchise.
“To me, it felt like an emotional reaction,” he said of the emails from Kylie and Khloé. “And, you know, they’re protective sisters. I didn’t necessarily look too deeply into what they were saying.”
During her testimony, Kylie looked over at mom Kris Jenner and sister Khloé seated in the front row of the courtroom gallery and smiled. Kim Kardashian, who attended the trial all last week, was absent Monday after traveling to Washington to see comedian John Stewart accept his Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center on Sunday. She was photographed at the event with her boyfriend Pete Davidson.
Kylie is due back on the witness stand Tuesday.
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