Did Robert Kardashian Really Warn His Kids About Fame?

Tuesday night's episode of The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story took the spotlight off the infamous trial for a few moments to focus on the celebrities that would take the world by storm in just a few decades — the Kardashian kids. The show's opening scene is set on Father’s Day and Robert Kardashian, a member of O.J. Simpson’s legal team and an important character on the show, takes young Kim, Khloé, Kourtney, and Rob out to lunch at a busy restaurant in Los Angeles. The restaurant hostess recognizes Robert Kardashian from watching the trial on television and, in a starstruck move, offers them a table right away. That afternoon, the Kardashian kids experience their first brush with fame — through their father. During lunch, Robert Kardashian dispenses some serious pearls of wisdom about stardom when his kids ask whether he thinks Simpson is guilty. “We are Kardashians. And in this family, being a good person and a loyal friend is more important than being famous. Fame is fleeting and it’s hollow. It means nothing at all without a virtuous heart,” David Schwimmer, who plays Robert Kardashian on the show, says to the kids. But critics are asking: did Robert Kardashian really lecture the future reality stars? Probably not, admitted the show’s creators Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, in an interview with Vanity Fair, but while creating the show, they say they discovered that Robert Kardashian had high moral values and was a loyal friend to Simpson. So it wasn't such a far-fetched idea to write a scene where Robert Kardashian is dispelling advice advice about the dangers of the celebrity life. In an exclusive interview with E! News, Schwimmer confirms that the scene was fiction, not fact. "The goal is to humanize all these characters, and for my character, part of that journey was being on camera for the first time in his life,” said Schwimmer. “He was a very modest, private person. Not a public person. So, his relationship to celebrity was something we thought, ‘Well, that has to be explored.'"