Kanye West’s former bodyguard, Steve Stanulis, says the rapper is one of the worst celebrities he has ever worked with, describing him as a lousy tipper that was both needy and moody.
Stanulis opened up on the Hollywood Raw podcast with Dax Holt and Adam Glyn, telling the hosts how West’s ‘ridiculous rules’ had affected their working relationship.
“He had some ridiculous rules… He wanted you to stay 10 paces behind him on a city street,” said Stanulis. “So obviously if someone is going to come up and do something, by the time I try to run up and prevent it, it would have already happened,” he said.
Stanulis, a former NYPD officer with a history of guarding A-list celebrities, revealed how he and West had got off on the wrong foot from the first time they met.
“The first day I met him… it was Fashion Week. I was supposed to meet him at the studio. When he gets there, we get into the elevator and he’s says ‘aren’t you going to push what floor we are going to?'” He adds, “I was like ‘I have no idea what floor, it’s my first day…”
“I said ‘Look bro, we can do this one of three ways. One, you could tell me what button to press, and now I’ll know. Two, you could press the button, and I’ll see which one you press so I’ll know. Or three, you can sit in here all day and tell me how important your time is and we are not going to go anywhere.’ Again, that was our first interaction. He went for the first option,”he said.
He also chronicled a hotel incident in which a drunken West got them into an altercation with the entourage of an Italian dignitary.
“We were coming home late from the studio and he was a little intoxicated,” Stanulis claimed, adding West was staying at the Waldorf. “He couldn’t find his room.”
West got confused and went to a room where an Italian dignitary was staying, Stanulis claimed, adding that the other guest’s “bodyguards, private security stand up. They didn’t know who [West] was. There was a language barrier. It was like a Mexican standoff.”
Later in the interview, Stanulis characterized West as the “neediest, moodiest and worst tipper”, before vowing to never work with him again. Daily Mast
