What Kris Jenner Really Knew About Caitlyn's Gender Identity

Updated on June 2, 2015 at 6:30 PM

In the July 2015 Vanity Fair article that accompanied the debut of Caitlyn Jenner, author Buzz Bissinger focused on Caitlyn's transition from Bruce but also addressed her relationship with Kris Jenner. Bissinger told Today that "Kris was very civil during the interview and she was very open." But how much did Kris really know during their 23-year marriage, and were Caitlyn's gender issues the reason for their split? Bissinger told Savannah Guthrie that Kris said, "I didn't know . . . I had no idea about the extent of his gender issues, really the severity," and for his part, Bissinger agreed. He shared, "I've got to say, I think she's right. I think Bruce downplayed it and I think Kris had a sense that whatever happened in the past I can fix it." Read on to see what both Kris and Caitlyn said about the topic.

Kris on Caitlyn

On the conflict in their marriage: "He was married to me and he wasn't who he wanted to be so he was miserable . . . All I was doing was working very hard for my family so that we could all have a wonderful future, and he was pissed off. At the end of my relationship with Bruce he definitely had a lot of social anxiety. That was one of the reasons we were in a struggle at the end. We fought a lot because we would go out together and before we got to the end of the block we were in a fight because he started saying 'when can we go home?'"
On not telling her about the transition at the end of their marriage: "He just decided I'm done now. It was like the most passive aggressive thing I think I've ever experienced."
Questioning Bruce's decision to be in a relationship with her: "Why would you want to be married and have kids if this is what you wanted since you were a little boy. Why would you not explain this all to me?"
On Bruce saying he was a "good solid B cup" due to hormones he'd been taking when they first met: "No B cup going on. Little bit of a man boob situation."
On what she knew when she met Bruce: "When I met Bruce he told me that he had done hormones back in the early 80s. This was a conversation that took place in the early 90s. So, what he was telling me happened a decade earlier, and he never really explained it. There wasn't a gender issue. Nobody mentioned a gender issue. Somebody mentioned that at one point in his life [he] liked to dress up."

Caitlyn on Kris

On possibly misleading Kris: "Probably a mistake I made was maybe not having her understand — not the severity of it but that this is a condition you cannot get away from. From that standpoint maybe I blew it away a little bit, sort of 'This is what I do.'"
On the changing dynamics of their marriage: "The first 15 years I felt she needed me more because I was the breadwinner . . . then really around the show, when that hit and she was running this whole show and getting credit for it and she had her own money, she didn't need me from that standpoint. The relationship was different. I think in a lot of ways she became less tolerant of me. Then I'd get upset and the whole relationship kind of fizzled."
On the way she was treated: "A lot of times she wasn't very nice, people would see how I got mistreated. She controlled the money . . . all that kind of stuff."
On the real reason for their split: "Twenty percent was gender and 80 percent was the way I was treated."