Caitlyn Jenner wanted to keep her gender confirmation surgery out of the public eye, so she opted to not tell ex-wife Kris Jenner and stepkids Kim, Kourtney, Khloe, and Rob Kardashian about the procedure.
“I didn’t tell anybody. Why? It’s none of their business,” Caitlyn, 68, explained on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories, which will air on ITV on Thursday, January 4. “I had already been living as Caitlyn for a year and a half, nobody knows anything. Because I didn’t want them to leak it to the press. And there was no reason for them to know about it. Of course not – of course I didn’t trust them.”
As previously reported, Caitlyn, formerly known as Bruce, transitioned in 2015 and underwent gender confirmation surgery in January 2017. She documented her journey on E’s I Am Cait for two seasons, as well as detailing more in her memoir, Secrets of My Life.
Since the release of Caitlyn’s memoir, she and the famous family have been at odds, publicly feuding over the validity of the book’s contents – particularly Caitlyn’s claims that Kris was aware of the former Olympian’s desire to transition early on in their 25-year marriage, which ended when the couple separated in 2013.
Kim has been particularly defensive of Kris since the release of the book. In June, she explained during an appearance on The View that she “definitely got upset” about its contents, but noted: “In our family, we definitely are always so close and stick through everything, so everything is definitely going to be fine.”
Still, Kim added that she was a “little shocked” that Caitlyn wrote things that “weren’t true or didn’t really make sense” in the memoir.
“At the end of the day, my mom and Caitlyn had a 25-year relationship,” Kim said at the time. “And you’ve gotta have some respect for it.”
Caitlyn also opened up about her strained relationship with the famous family while speaking to students at the U.K.’s Cambridge Union in November. “It’s been a little tough over the last couple of years on the Kardashian side,” the author told the crowd, per the Cambridge News. “To be honest, I don’t talk to them anymore. Kim I haven’t talked in a year. They don’t want me in their lives, they bashed me pretty badly. It’s devastating when your kids do that. It really hurt. I don’t know what the future holds. We will see.”
