Kris Jenner said in court on Thursday that she was happy when she heard her son Rob Kardashian was engaged to his new girlfriend Blac Chyna, despite stories of violence and volatility about her.
"I just wanted my son to be happy," the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star and Kardashian-Jenner family matriarch said, from the witness stand, in a Los Angeles courtroom. “They had a rocky relationship from the start, and I just wanted really a win for them.”
Jenner was the first of four defendants — a group that also includes her daughters Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian and Kylie Jenner — to testify in Blac Chyna's $100 million lawsuit alleging that the women conspired to have her reality show Rob & Chyna cancelled and damage her celebrity status.
In her questioning, Chyna's lawyer Lynne Ciani attempted to cast Kris as having prejudicial feelings towards Chyna from the start, over stories she had heard about Chyna's relationship with rapper Tyga, who dated Kylie immediately after.
Kris said she had heard from her daughter and Tyga that Chyna had physically abused Tyga and had, at one point, threatened to kill Kylie.
Ciani asked her why she didn't go to the police or do more to intervene after hearing these stories.
“I wasn’t that concerned. There were all kinds of things going on,” Kris said. “There was just a lot of drama, which I’m used to in my family.”
Kim and Khloe, who are also set to give evidence, watched their mother's testimony from the front row of the gallery. Kylie has attended the trial all week but was not present on Thursday.
When called to the stand in the afternoon, Kris, who was wearing an aqua blue suit, removed the face mask she had been wearing while sitting in the gallery and put on her glasses.
Ciani asked Kris why she reacted happily when she first heard in 2016 that her son was getting engaged to Chyna, and had the same reaction when she heard the two were having a baby.
“People change,” Kris said. “You want to give people a second chance. You hoped for the best, and we moved on.”
Kris would be an executive producer on the couple's Keeping Up with the Kardashians spin-off, Rob & Chyna, which had its premiere in September 2016.
Asked whether she had prevented footage dealing with her son's depression from being shown because it was “too dark," Kris said she couldn't recall. She said she may have had the ability to do as much when the scenes were first shot, but she had no control once it reached the network.
Ciani asked whether Kris had ever told Jeff Jenkins, an executive from the E! network, which broadcast both shows, that she was not happy with her son's choice of Chyna as a fiancee.
“I may have said something like that when they were fighting or in an argument, because that’s how I was feeling that day,” Kris said.
The trial then turned to the key day of December 15, 2016, when Chyna and Rob had a fight that would lead to her moving out of their home and the end of their relationship. Much of Chyna's testimony on Wednesday dealt with the fight, and the celebration of the show's renewal the night before. Chyna said that she was joking with her fiance when she wrapped a phone cord around his neck and grabbed his unloaded gun off a bedside table.
Kris gave evidence that she couldn't remember whether it was Rob or Chyna who first called her that morning.
“It was chaotic, it was a mess, it was crazy, and they were both very upset,” she said. “I was extremely upset because they were extremely upset.”
She said that she meant to go intervene but that her boyfriend Corey Gamble, who will testify later in the trial, wouldn't let her.
“I said I’m going right over, and Corey said ‘No you’re not, I’m going over there,'” Kris said.
The day's testimony ended there. Kris was to return to the stand on Friday.
Chyna's lawsuit, filed in 2017, alleges defamation and interference with contracts. It accuses Kris of being a ringleader who used her daughters in a campaign to defame the model as abusive towards Rob.
Two other defendants, Kourtney Kardashian and Kendall Jenner, were dismissed from the case during the run-up to the trial.
