In her twenties, Rachel* spent her weekends rubbing shoulders with famous pop stars at exclusive New York City parties, attending awards shows and jetting off on luxury holidays. Rachel wasn’t famous herself — nor was she aspiring to be — she got this kind of access because she was the best friend of a famous TV star, a former child actor at the height of their career. The perks were intoxicating: free dinners, parties, taxis, vacations and front-row access to a glamorous world for VIPs only. “At a certain point you get used to it because you’re in the inner circle — I learned how to be chill in these spaces, how to dress, how to take care of my appearance better,” says Rachel, who is speaking anonymously and doesn’t want to name the celebrity for privacy reasons. “I got to do really fun and exciting things that would have probably cost thousands of dollars.”But in exchange for being in the celebrity’s inner circle, Rachel became the “normal,” grounding friend, which came with an unwritten set of rules.“There was an expectation of, ‘You're getting access to big things, so you're on call when I need you,’” says Rachel. “There were times where there was friction when I was expected to be around five nights a week. It’s not a normal kind of friendship. If you want an authentic relationship with that person, nothing changes the context of how surreal fame is.” The camera has been turned onto the role of celebrity BBFs in Khloé Kardashian’s new Hulu reality show, The Girls, which offers a glimpse into the lives of the influencers who have orbited the Kardashian family for decades. The group includes longtime Kardashian VIPs, the Haqq twins, Malika and Khadijah; style cousins Natalie Halcro and Olivia Pierson; beauty entrepreneur Yris Palmer and model Nicole Williams English. These are women who have all built careers and businesses off the Kardashian orbit, with Instagram followings ranging from 1.3 million to 5.8 million, alongside their own beauty lines, businesses and styling ventures. Khloé’s decision to document her friends’ lives suggests that celebrity BFFs may be the next frontier of public fascination, one deemed worthy enough of an entire TV show. Khloé Kardashian pictured with her inner circle, the stars of her new reality series ‘The Girls,’ which offers a glimpse into the lives of the influencers who have orbited the Kardashian family for decades (Disney/Cristian Lopez)Taylor Swift’s childhood best friend, Abigail Anderson Berard — who works a corporate job by day — occupies a crucial place in the imagination of Swift’s fandom (Getty Images for NARAS)The intrigue has been brewing for a while. Taylor Swift’s childhood best friend, Abigail Anderson Berard — who works a corporate job by day — occupies a crucial place in the imagination of Swift’s fandom since the singer name-checked her in the 2008 song “Fifteen.” Berard’s movements are often tracked by Swifties when they’re trying to decipher the whereabouts of the pop star herself, and fans were sent into a frenzy when Berard arrived at Madison Square Garden for Swift’s wedding to Travis Kelce in July. There is also pop star Sabrina Carpenter’s bestie Paloma Sandoval, a Canadian content creator and stylist with more than 180,000 Instagram followers, who gives fans an inside look into the singer’s life and their friendship (Carpenter has credited Sandoval for coining the title of her 2024 hit “Bed Chem.”)Sabrina Carpenter’s bestie Paloma Sandoval gives fans an inside look into the singer’s life and their friendship (Instagram via @palomaidaliasandoval)Being a celebrity BFF, to some, may sound like a dream come true — you get the perks of being famous without suffering the same level of scrutiny. You can schmooze with household names, attend the most lavish parties of the year and live vicariously through your friend’s celebrity. But there are expectations, says Rachel, who stepped away from her friendship six years ago when the dynamic had shifted. “As normal friends, we couldn’t afford to buy these dinners, and it was awkward if anyone tried,” she remembers. “But at the same time, it could get very uncomfortable being given so much and more than you ever asked for.”In public, there was an expectation that Rachel would behave in a certain demure way. “You're being taken into spaces where you technically don't belong,” she says. “There was an unsaid understanding that we stay close to the group, if people approach us, chat with them, but don’t go roving around or make a spectacle of it.”Rachel remembers when a new group of girls accompanied their inner circle for the evening, but it didn’t last long when they lost their cool around a very famous pop star. “They made it their mission to be around this pop star, to be his next girlfriend or whatever,” she remembers. “That was an immediate, ‘You're not invited back’ kind of thing.”While celebrity BFFs have to navigate this bizarre world of second-hand access to fame, fans have never been more interested in watching the lives of these friends through social media. Hannah Ewens, culture writer and author of Fangirls: Scenes from Modern Music Culture, says celebrity BFFs have become the next frontier for fans to gain more insight into the lives of their most beloved stars.Sabrina Carpenter’s bestie Paloma now plays an important role in the singer’s fandom (Instagram via @palomaidaliasandoval)“The online BFF is definitely a new alternative space for fans to check up on the star,” she says. “The friend is not the tabloids or artist-approved Instagram shots, but they’re a secret third thing… they allow fans to imagine the life of being the celebrity’s best friend, which is a unique position in general but probably something that a lot of young fans are ultimately very invested in because it adds to the whole celebrity’s cinematic universe.”For the Kardashian family, their close friends have leveraged exposure on social media to build their own mini beauty and media empires over the past decade. The Haqq sisters, for example, helped manage their own Kardashian-owned DASH boutique and have become reality TV stars in their own right. In turn, these BFFs are also very useful to the Kardashian brand. MJ Corey, the creator of the viral social media account Kardashian Kolloquium and author of the postmodern theory book Dekonstructing the Kardashians: A New Media Manifesto, says that the stars of The Girls help to humanize the family if they're seen as building friendships.“I've seen in their storytelling the pattern that it is very important to them to give the image that they are nurturing old childhood friendships, long-term friendships with former neighbors,” she says. “I think [the family] do have a lot to gain from propping these friends up in their social world.” Ultimately, she says, the Kardashian family business is about “the production of imagery” more than anything else.For years, close friends of the Kardashian family have leveraged exposure on social media to build their own mini beauty and media empires (Disney/Cristian Lopez)Having studied the Kardashian family from an academic point of view for years, Corey reckons a lot of deliberation would have gone into selecting the friends who were the best fit for Khloe’s new reality show, and that there will be rules for how they need to behave. “I think these girls are on the clock. There are benefits, but I know there are constraints,” she explains. “We know that there's a TSA-level security process to get into Kim's house after the robbery [in 2016]. There's a subtext that the people that managed to get that close and stay that close have something special about them.”Members of The Girls cast will receive a handsome paycheque for their duties as a celebrity BFF in their new TV show, but being an unpaid member of the celebrity multiverse can take its toll.Rachel often found that meaningful moments with her friend were interrupted, or even eclipsed, by the realities of their fame. “Sometimes there’s a high when a fan wants to talk to them, and then in other moments, it disrupts a genuine friend moment. You're like, ‘F***, this person belongs to everyone,’” she says. “It was a really trippy, existential experience.”Rachel doesn’t regret spending her twenties in the way she did. “It’s satiated a curiosity that all of us are conditioned to have about what’s on the other side of those VIP doors,” she says. “I feel comfortable in those spaces, but I also feel really clear that I was interested in something different, which is not that world.”* Name has been changed