The moment Kanye West personally delivered Kim Kardashian’s infamous sex tape to his ex-wife was captured in episode three of Hulu’s The Kardashians, which premiered on Thursday (April 28).
The sex tape, which also featured Kardashian’s then-boyfriend Ray J, catapulted the reality TV star to fame when it leaked in 2007. But the tape has been back in the headlines in recent months after Wack 100 claimed he possessed “graphic” new footage and offered to gift it to Kanye as a “personal, private NFT.”
Kim Kardashian and her team denied the existence of a second sex tape, but there’s no doubting Kanye’s heroics in retrieving the alleged footage. The episode shows the Chicago rap icon meeting his ex-wife and some of her family in New York in October, fresh off a red-eye flight from Los Angeles where he collected the sex tape from Ray J.
“I just came from the airport. I had to go to L.A. and come back. I just traveled to get something for Kim,” Ye tells Kim’s mother, Kris Jenner, inside the hotel room. “That’s what she wants to show you.”
Kanye then lays down a suitcase in front of Kim and co., before his ex-wife unzips it to reveal a laptop and hard drive containing the allegedly unseen footage of her storied sex tape.
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“So Kanye flew home last night and he came back this morning and I want to show you guys what he got me,” Kim tells the group while crying. “He got me all of the sex tape back.”
Jenner also shows her appreciation, saying, “Thank you for Kanye and for his unbelievable way he does things and the ability to get something done — and probably a big, fat, huge check, so we’re all very grateful.”
Kanye reassures her, “Oh, definitely not no check. We’re not getting extorted ever again.”
Kanye West first spoke about retrieving the sex tape during an interview with Hollywood Unlocked‘s Jason Lee in January, during which he also explained his ex-wife’s emotional reaction.
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“I went and got the laptop from Ray J myself that night,” he said. “Got on the red-eye and met this man at the airport, then got on the red-eye, came back, delivered it to her at 8 a.m. in the morning. She cried when she saw it. You know why she cried when she seen the laptop? ‘Cause it represents how much she’s been used. It represents how much people didn’t love her and they just saw her as a commodity.”
Despite Wack 100’s claims about the salacious nature of the footage, Kim Kardashian’s team denied the hard drive contained any sexual content.
“The computer and hard drive collected were supposed to contain the original video and any unseen footage,” a rep told Page Six in January. “After review, there was nothing sexual unseen, only footage on the plane on the way to Mexico and footage at a club and restaurant on the same trip.”
Kim Kardashian doubled down on that claim during Thursday’s episode of The Kardashians, saying, “I watched it. It was just footage of us at a restaurant, at a nightclub. Nothing sexual, nothing weird. And so now I can take a deep breath and not worry about this right before SNL, right before the bar [exam].”
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She added, “I know Kanye did this for me, but he also did this for my kids. I want to shield them from as much as I can and if I had the power to, or if Kanye has the power to, that is just the most important thing to me and I’m just so emotional because of it. It just means a lot to me.”
The divorced couple haven’t been entirely successful in sheltering their children from Kim Kardashian’s past, though. An earlier episode The Kardashiansfound Kim crying on the phone to Kanye after their 6-year-old son, Saint, stumbled across an online pop-up touting more scenes from her Ray J sex tape.