The toll that Kanye West’s shifting behaviour took on Kim Kardashian during their six-year marriage is set to be laid bare in a new documentary.
In Whose Name? was filmed by director Nico Ballesteros, who began documenting West six years ago, at the age of just 18.
Over that time, he amassed thousands of hours of footage, charting the rapper’s apparent worsening mental health struggles, his crumbling marriage to reality TV queen Kardashian, and a string of increasingly erratic public outbursts.
The newly released trailer opens with West revealing: “I’m off my meds for five months now,” in reference to treatment for his bipolar disorder.
In another scene, he adds: “I’d rather be dead than to be on medication. Either they destroy me or I destroy it.”
Kardashian and West wed in 2014 and share four children – North, Saint, Chicago, and Psalm. She filed for divorce in February 2021, and the pair were legally declared single the following year.
West later married Australian architect Bianca Censori in a private ceremony, while Kardashian dated comedian Pete Davidson for nine months before being linked to other stars.
In 2020, Kardashian addressed her then-husband’s behaviour in a social media post, describing him as “a brilliant but complicated person” whose “words sometimes do not align with his intentions”.
The teaser shows a tearful Kardashian telling West: “Your personality was not like this a few years ago,” as he is seen exiting her dressing room.
Other clips capture his most controversial moments, including antisemitic rants in which he declared “I am a Nazi” and “I love Hitler”, and an attempt to sell T-shirts emblazoned with a swastika.
The film also covers his failed 2020 US presidential campaign, his emotional Easter Sunday Service performance at Coachella in 2019, and an extremely disturbing moment where he says: “I almost killed my daughter.”
In one exchange, SKIMS mogal Kardashian attempts to speak calmly, saying: “We could talk about that later, but—” before West cuts her off, insisting: “It ain’t no but.”
The documentary’s synopsis promises an unfiltered portrait of one of the most controversial figures in modern culture, exploring “the razor’s edge between creative genius and self-destruction” and “the cost of freedom in a fame-obsessed world”.
In Whose Name? will be released on September 19.
