Kim Kardashian’s New Show ‘All’s Fair’ Just Hit 0% On Rotten Tomatoes
Ryan Murphy’s new Hulu series All’s Fair follows two high-powered lawyers (Kim Kardashian and Naomi Watts) who leave their old firm to start a women-led legal practice — but critics say the glossy “girlboss” drama has become one of Murphy’s biggest flops yet.
The signs were there. A monotone delivery in a tense scene; a jarringly immobile expression of hate, or love (it didn’t really matter; it always looked the same); a lukewarm intensity, coupled with narrowed eyes, meant to indicate ire. But it all still worked, somehow, for Kim Kardashian. In American Horror Story: Delicate, she played a girlboss version of herself that didn’t require much range; and yet, she wielded a comic timing honed after years of playing herself on a semi-scripted reality show. Her performances in Drop Dead Diva and Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, her first major roles as people not named Kim Kardashian, played to the same talents.
The cracks seemed to show in her 2021 outing on Saturday Night Live. Though the show’s writers and cast generously played to her strengths (timing; hotness; ability to move her limbs), she couldn’t pop in scenes that theoretically would have suited her. Her impression of Aidy Bryant didn’t hint at a future as a comedic genius. She failed to visibly react to any of the cartoonish characters who wooed her in the episode’s Bachelor parody: she delivered wooden line after wooden line like one of those AI services that calls you in the voice of your recently deceased relative. But at least she remembered those lines! That became the resounding refrain on YouTube in the comments sections underneath each of her SNL clips.
Kim’s fans will always defend her. She could join ISIS, demand the return of Prohibition, or stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and her fans would still defend her, a billionaire, one who has rarely shown interest in improving the world outside her own sphere of influence, and who will likely never meet them.
But this time it will be harder for them to defend her. Her new show, All’s Fair, has a 0% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes, and Kim’s acting is getting raked over the coals.
The role was clearly written for her: She’s another high-powered, no-nonsense girlboss, playing into her personal brand as she fires off Ryan Murphy-lite lines about sex, fashion, and emotional violence. This time, however, she is the bona fide star of the show and its purported emotional center, designed to evoke sympathy from the audience, sweeping them into the story. Apparently, her general understanding of comic timing and flawless figure are not sufficient to pull this off, and the show’s bafflingly poor writing has made her job even harder. Kim is simply unable to tap into the emotional complexity necessary to make this role dominate on the screen. Surely, the real Kim possesses emotional trauma underneath that polished image (she is human, after all); but perhaps she has lacked the bravery to become vulnerable, to dig for it. Even the recently ascendent Lindsay Lohan, in her Addled Era, could pull off devastating scenes in The Canyons despite having spent years adjusting her image in the public eye.
But to rewrite Kim’s own famous quote, perhaps this is all par for the course for a girl with no talent. Kim Kardashian was never an actress, or even a star in the sense that she could leverage her most charismatic qualities within a variety of roles. She was never more than herself, a human with average capabilities and a lucky birth, driven by the siren call of money and fame, beholden to the virtue of self-immortalization.
The results have been disastrous. Reviews across the world have slammed All’s Fair, calling it, among other things, “scripted by a toddler, “the worst drama of all time,” and “the worst TV show ever.” Kim herself has been dubbed “stiff,” “affectless,” “monotonal,” “emotionally negligent,” “stilted,” with “no aura,” and with “a complete lack of acting skill.”
The worst part is that this show could have been great. Truly brilliant actresses like Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, and Niecy Nash are in this show, doing their best to elevate lines that more and more people are suspecting were written by A.I. But a show is only as good as its weakest link, and the award-winning actresses of All’s Fair stoop to Kim Kardashian’s level, perhaps after being strong-armed by producer Kris Jenner to make her daughter look like the next Marlon Brando.
On the bright side, I can say that the decade-long argument about Kim Kardashian’s acting skills has finally ended. Now, I wouldn’t say that this was our worst national nightmare, but it was certainly one of them, and I’m glad for my newfound sense of relief. That is, unless Kim’s fans find me and accuse me of being anti-joy or anti-family or responsible for every plague in human history, in which case see you on the other side! Since Kim will be looking for a new job soon, maybe I can hire her as my lawyer.
