Acting Coaches Think Kim Kardashian Slayed On AHS: Delicate

In a 2008 Keeping Up with the Kardashians episode, Kourtney and Khloé attend an acting class and become particularly tickled by an exercise where they have to channel powerful emotions into a simple word, “hat.” Naturally, the sisters later share what they learned with Kim at their clothing boutique DASH.

“Hat... HAT. HAAAAT,” Kim says like a war cry, charging at her sisters.

Despite the bold display, the SKIMS founder didn’t think she could be a proper ac-tor. “I wish I had it in me,” she laments in a confessional.

But 15 years later, Kim may finally prove she does have *it.* American Horror Story: Delicate marks the mogul’s major acting debut — playing Siobhan Corbyn, a confident, high-powered publicist who effortlessly navigates her client-slash-bestie’s problems with composed retorts like “Tell the Daniels to suck my clit.” (Her first line in the show. Bravo.)

Kim’s performance has received generally positive reviews from critics, who tend to be surprised at their own approval. (The Guardian, for example, says she’s “scarily not bad.”) But because Kim said she worked with an acting coach for this project, I wondered what the professionals think about her training. Did it pay off?

I asked three experts for their thoughts on Kim’s Delicate performance — and they had many notes for the new actor.

A Full-Circle Moment

Bobbie Chance is a director and acting coach who’s worked with stars from Ryan Reynolds to Scarlett Johansson to, yes, the Kardashians — she’s the woman who taught the sisters the “hat” exercise they liked so much.

In that prescient 2008 episode, Bobbie worked with Kourtney and Khloé. But she tells Bustle that her son, Richie Chance, taught a separate class with Kim.

“She was very closed off and guarded,” Chance recalls. “She said, ‘I don’t really want to do this. I’m not an actress.’”

Fast-forward 15 years, Chance is “thrilled” to see Kim step out of her comfort zone in such a public way. (There have been other roles, but never on this scale.) “She allowed herself to be open, and she allowed herself to get through her fear,” the acting coach says.

Regarding Kim’s acting chops, Chance thinks her performance “is a start.” She’ll be eyeing Kim’s career from here, hoping she can “wash off all her makeup” (literal and otherwise) and get lost in a grounded role. “Because I truly believe she has a lot of fire and passion,” Chance explains.

Close To Home

It doesn’t hurt that Kim is playing someone so Kardashian-coded on AHS: Delicate. Fans have noticed apparent references to everything from Kendall Jenner’s cucumber chopping and Kim’s Marilyn Monroe Met Gala moment to Kris Jenner’s general momager-ness.

Playing a character who’s fairly close to home probably felt “comfortable,” says Sam Stiglitz, a casting director-turned-coach who works with traditional actors and well-known personalities like Nick Viall and Gigi Gorgeous Getty.

Still, Stiglitz thinks Kim’s performance stands on its own. “I was pleasantly surprised, especially because she’s a new actor,” she says. “In acting, we’re looking for storytelling: What is the story you’re telling? And are you telling it from a specific point of view? And I thought she did a really good job with that.”

The coach also praises Kim’s on-screen rapport with Emma Roberts, who plays rising starlet Anna Victoria Alcott. “They did a really good job of building out the fact that they were friends, and they were so close,” Stiglitz adds.

Kim’s AHS Report Card

For Bernard Hiller, an acting coach Lindsay Lohan called her “mentor” while preparing for her acting comeback, Kim’s performance gets an A. While he thinks she did a “fantastic” job, he explains that further coaching could cinch her an A+.

“What she’s not doing in this particular piece — because she’s new, believe me, no one really does [this] — [is] she’s not responding first,” Hiller says. “She’s not thinking and then speaking. Those are two things that really make acting acting.”

That is, Kim has Siobhan’s sharply comedic lines down, but with more time and practice, Hiller says the budding thespian could learn to physically react to dialogue in a more natural way.

“If you want to get more layered, if you want to get more recognized, if you want to be more appreciated in the acting world, you just need to study,” he adds. “I’ve been doing this business for 35 years, and I’m still studying.”

Fortunately, Kim’s good at that. The businesswoman is still studying to become a lawyer, of course — but if these Delicate reviews indicate anything, her nascent acting career has a healthy life ahead of it.