Kendra Wilkinson talks to Yahoo about her publish–actuality TV profession in actual property, which she calls “a enterprise that doesn’t contain promoting my soul for a paycheck.” (Picture illustration: Yahoo Information; picture: Paul Archuleta/Getty Photos for The PM Lounge Fresno Grand Opening)
Think about that the individual you have been at 19 is the way you’re perceived for the remainder of your life.
Welcome to Kendra Wilkinson’s world.
At 40, the previous actuality star, who shot to stardom as considered one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends, has now been working in actual property for greater than 5 years — a stretch that already outlasts her time on the Playboy Mansion. Her life moved ahead. The label stayed put.
“I began my public life as a celeb once I was 19,” Wilkinson tells Yahoo. “I used to be so younger. My entire identification, for 20 years, was tied into that. I’m very grateful for what it introduced me. TV was wonderful. I had an awesome journey on digicam. I like to entertain. However I didn’t notice how tightly my identification would keep tethered to that 19-year-old Playboy lady.”
She provides, “It was 5 years of my life. It shouldn’t be my complete identification.”
Wilkinson, left, met Hugh Hefner when she was 18 and appeared alongside the late Playboy mogul and fellow girlfriends Bridget Marquardt and Holly Madison in The Women Subsequent Door from 2005 to 2009. (Carlo Allegri/Getty Photos)
Wilkinson didn’t attain out to me to complain concerning the persona that adopted her from The Women Subsequent Door with Hugh Hefner to Kendra, Kendra on High and Kendra Sells Hollywood. I contacted her after seeing paparazzi images of her outdoors an open home for considered one of her listings — the form of clickbait that tabloids publish to feed trolls.
To me, I noticed a divorcée and dealing mother hustling to assist her two children, Hank, 16, and Alijah, 11, after well-documented psychological well being challenges. She was not dressed for the male gaze. She’s dressed for work.
The images didn’t trouble Wilkinson. To her, they marked one thing else completely.
“I might fairly there be images of me in a dumpy outfit placing up an open home signal than me in a brief costume on a purple carpet … being a celeb for no purpose,” she says. “It’s good that individuals care to see me in my new world fairly than pinning me down in my previous life.”
Wilkinson’s new life sees her working full-time with Ernie Carswell & Associates of Sotheby’s Worldwide Realty in Los Angeles, juggling purchasers throughout value factors. She’s taking new purchasers, she says, and has discovered to identify the distinction between a critical purchaser and somebody who simply needs to fulfill her.
“There are a few actuality exhibits that make it look like it is all glitz and glam,” she says, referring to Promoting Sunset and comparable fare. “In actuality, it isn’t. Actual property just isn’t for the weak.”
Nevertheless, doing the arduous work has given her a deeper sense of goal than stardom ever did.
“Each deal that I shut appears like proof of my evolution,” she says. “I did that with out fame. I did it with my information, my expertise. I really feel like a superhero.”
Wilkinson stated that whereas she was “as soon as on high of the world” within the “high-energy, rock ‘n’ roll way of life” she was dwelling — exhibits, books, events and appearances across the globe — it was an empty existence in some ways.
“I by no means felt profitable,” she says. “I felt well-known, however I by no means felt the precise feeling of success. Now, if I promote a $700,000 rental, I truly expertise the sensation of success.”
Wilkinson now not views herself as a celeb, however “a single mom … working her ass off to place meals on the desk” — a mindset that’s driving her professionally.
“I solely get this chance one time to really succeed alone … in a enterprise that does not contain sleeping with an 80-year-old, or promoting my soul for a paycheck,” Wilkinson says. “Success past fame is a excessive that nothing else provides me.”
For the document, Wilkinson’s work type is mindfully curated — in her phrases, “I purposely costume like shit simply to piss folks off.”
She thinks that if she clothes “fairly, individuals are gonna suppose Playboy.” So she buttons all the best way up — and purposefully covers her cleavage.
“I might a lot fairly be known as ‘skilled’ than ‘horny’ these days,” she says. “‘Skilled’ is a praise that takes me past the clouds. ‘Horny’ falls utterly flat. It is a part of my identification that I’ve utterly let go of.”
Wilkinson has thought of eradicating her breast implants as a result of they’re “not even near who I’m anymore,” she says. Perhaps they by no means have been, as she’s “all the time been this tomboy — in addition to my boobs,” she says. Nevertheless, elective surgical procedure to take away them is round $10,000, and “I am not wealthy anymore,” she says. “I might fairly save that cash for, like, a visit.”
“I’ve developed … and I am undoubtedly extra godly, however once in a while I like a great time,” says Wilkinson, celebrating her cowl of Supermodels Limitless on Jan. 13. (Tiffany Rose/Getty Photos for Supermodels Limitless)
Wilkinson’s reinvention hasn’t come with out price. After her divorce from Hank Baskett, which was finalized in 2019, and pulling again from actuality TV, Wilkinson confronted identification whiplash.
“I by no means knew life with out cameras,” she says. “So after they shut off sooner or later, my entire world turned the wrong way up. I by no means ready for that.”
She agreed to be on Kendra Sells Hollywood, which aired from 2021 to 2023, to doc her skilled pivot, however she felt strain to entertain the world once more was a “poisonous flip.”
Wilkinson’s psychological well being reached a breaking level, forcing her to hunt remedy for despair and extreme nervousness assaults in 2023, and rethink how she needed to stay.
“I used to be left feeling extraordinarily lonely and depressed,” she says. “I could not even breathe. I had no hope of the subsequent day.”
Throughout that interval, Wilkinson was on her knees “begging for mercy” — and located consolation in God. She started Bible research — with a bunch of older, nurturing girls who grew to become mother figures — which has given her construction and peace.
“I’ve discovered how you can stay a less complicated, extra peaceable life with God in it,” says Wilkinson, who doesn’t determine with a sure faith or attend church. “It’s utterly modified my life for the higher. … I’ve discovered to place my psychological well being — and God — first.”
That doesn’t imply that Wilkinson doesn’t “nonetheless get out and I’ve just a little enjoyable.” As for courting, she doesn’t desire a relationship to intrude together with her skilled ambition. Nevertheless, mates with advantages are accepted. Whereas she’s on good phrases with Baskett, she’s undecided she’ll ever remarry after their divorce: “Love and marriage … damage me to my lowest of low.”
Wilkinson, on the 2016 Kendra on High premiere, says she needs to take away her breast implants, however “I can not simply throw away $10,000 proper now.” (Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic)
What’s not OK are males she doesn’t know hopping into her DMs with expectations rooted in her previous, which she finds unsettling fairly than flattering.
“I am some dumpy ass realtor now — not this intercourse image. Why are all these males reaching out saying they love me?” she says with amusing. “All these dudes do is consider me and Playboy, which is the exact opposite of who I’m these days. It makes me so uncomfortable. These folks have not seen me evolve into this new girl I’m.”
The disconnect now not feels defining — simply exhausting.
“I remained nearly hostage on this identification for 20 years,” Wilkinson says. “For the primary time, I really feel liberated. I get to simply be who I actually am.”
That sense of freedom has reshaped how she sees fame altogether — particularly now, as a mom. Wilkinson says her daughter has began speaking about desirous to be well-known — a thought that stops her chilly.
“That scares me,” Wilkinson says, ”as a result of I do know what that may deliver. … It’s harmful to be well-known. There’s loads of bloodshed, tears. It’s very lonely.”
She encourages her children to deal with college, sports activities, their devices and finally school — the form of stability she didn’t have at their age.
Lately, she sees her personal story much less as a cautionary story about Playboy than about movie star itself.
“In case you’re not cautious,” she says, “Hollywood can actually eat you up and spit you out. That is what I really feel prefer it did to me.”
