Kendra Wilkinson is opening up about the time she felt “so lost” after her divorce from ex-husband Hank Baskett, which coincided with the end of her decade-long run on television.
In the latest episode of PodcastOne’s On Display with Melissa Gorga, Wilkinson, 38, said her divorce, combined with the end of her E! reality show, Kendra on Top, “triggered my depression.”
“I went through a divorce, lost everything I knew, which was my TV show. I had a TV show every year until my divorce,” she explained. “Then my divorce happened and all of a sudden, now I’m left with no marriage, I’m left with no show, I had to move into a little house — I didn’t understand what was going on and all of a sudden I had to do some intense healing.”
Wilkinson and Baskett, 40, married in 2009 but split close to 10 years later, finalizing their divorce in 2019. They share two children, Hank IV, 13, and Alijah Mary, 9.
Their relationship was at the center of WE tv’s Kendra on Top, which ran from 2012 to 2017. Its end began a four-year period where Wilkinson — who had previously been on E!’s The Girls Next Door and Kendra — wasn’t leading her own show.
“For years, I didn’t have fame,” Wilkinson told podcast host and Real Housewives of New Jersey star, Melissa Gorga. “I didn’t have everything I knew for a really long time. I didn’t know who I was. I was so lost.”
The apparent end of her reality TV career made it “ impossible to be happy at that point,” Wilkinson said. “I didn’t even know how to be happy. My kids were what gave me the purpose.”
Wilkinson’s kids also gave her the push to “stay alive, to keep going, to drive them to hockey and basketball and smile and watch them do everything. They’re the ones who kept my heart beating.”
After doing “some serious healing,” Wilkinson chose to pursue her next career in real estate. She then returned to television in 2021 with her real estate series, Kendra Sells Hollywood.
“I was just like a zombie not knowing what I was going to do for a living,” she recalled. “I have nobody paying my bills … It was so hard. So, four years, five years afterwards, I’m like, ‘Okay, I did a lot of healing. I did a lot of healing from Playboy.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, who am I? Who is this chick? I don’t even know who this person is.’”
“I had to figure it out and put faith in something again, put faith in life,” Wilkinson said, adding that she did not know her real estate career would be the subject of a show at first.
“When it did, it was just wow,” Wilkinson told Gorga, 44. “It’s like God was giving my life back to me. It was crazy and I’m just so grateful to have this opportunity.”
Wilkinson is also grateful to be on good terms with her ex, saying she and Baskett had a “great marriage” but are now “great co-parents.”
“You know, of course, nobody really signs up for a marriage to get divorced,” she explained. “There were a couple of bumps in the road, but the public made it a little worse.”
Kendra Sells Hollywood, which debuted on Discovery+, is now streaming on Max.
