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 Pictures for The PM Lounge Fresno Grand Opening)
Think about that the particular person 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 one in all 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 star after I was 19,” Wilkinson tells Yahoo. “I used to be so younger. My complete identification, for 20 years, was tied into that. I’m very grateful for what it introduced me. TV was wonderful. I had an incredible journey on digicam. I like to entertain. However I didn’t understand how tightly my identification would keep tethered to that 19-year-old Playboy woman.”
She provides, “It was 5 years of my life. It shouldn’t be my whole 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 Pictures)
Wilkinson didn’t attain out to me to complain in regards to the persona that adopted her from The Women Subsequent Door with Hugh Hefner to Kendra, Kendra on Prime and Kendra Sells Hollywood. I contacted her after seeing paparazzi pictures of her outdoors an open home for one in all her listings — the type of clickbait that tabloids publish to feed trolls.
To me, I noticed a divorcée and dealing mother hustling to help her two youngsters, 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 pictures didn’t hassle Wilkinson. To her, they marked one thing else fully.
“I’d slightly there be pictures of me in a dumpy outfit placing up an open home signal than me in a brief gown on a crimson carpet … being a star for no cause,” she says. “It’s good that individuals care to see me in my new world slightly than pinning me down in my outdated life.”
Wilkinson’s new life sees her working full-time with Ernie Carswell & Associates of Sotheby’s Worldwide Realty in Los Angeles, juggling shoppers throughout worth factors. She’s taking new shoppers, she says, and has discovered to identify the distinction between a severe purchaser and somebody who simply needs to fulfill her.
“There are a few actuality exhibits that make it seem to be it is all glitz and glam,” she says, referring to Promoting Sunset and related fare. “In actuality, it is not. Actual property is just not for the weak.”
Nevertheless, doing the exhausting work has given her a deeper sense of function than stardom ever did.
“Each deal that I shut looks 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 mentioned that whereas she was “as soon as on high of the world” within the “high-energy, rock ‘n’ roll way of life” she was residing — 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 apartment, I truly expertise the sensation of success.”
Wilkinson not views herself as a star, 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 actually 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 offers me.”
For the file, Wilkinson’s work fashion is mindfully curated — in her phrases, “I purposely gown like shit simply to piss individuals off.”
She thinks that if she clothes “fairly, individuals are gonna assume Playboy.” So she buttons all the way in which up — and purposefully covers her cleavage.
“I’d a lot slightly be referred to as ‘skilled’ than ‘attractive’ these days,” she says. “‘Skilled’ is a praise that takes me past the clouds. ‘Attractive’ falls fully flat. It is a part of my identification that I’ve fully 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 — moreover 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 would slightly save that cash for, like, a visit.”
“I’ve developed … and I am undoubtedly extra godly, however from time to time I like a superb time,” says Wilkinson, celebrating her cowl of Supermodels Limitless on Jan. 13. (Tiffany Rose/Getty Pictures 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 once they shut off someday, my complete 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 learn how to stay a less complicated, extra peaceable life with God in it,” says Wilkinson, who doesn’t establish with a sure faith or attend church. “It’s fully 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 a bit of enjoyable.” As for courting, she doesn’t need a relationship to intervene together with her skilled ambition. Nevertheless, associates with advantages are accredited. Whereas she’s on good phrases with Baskett, she’s unsure she’ll ever remarry after their divorce: “Love and marriage … damage me to my lowest of low.”
Wilkinson, on the 2016 Kendra on Prime 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 slightly 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 individuals have not seen me evolve into this new girl I’m.”
The disconnect 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 carry. … It’s harmful to be well-known. There’s loads of bloodshed, tears. It’s very lonely.”
She encourages her youngsters to give attention to college, sports activities, their devices and finally school — the type 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 superstar itself.
“For those who’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.”
