Ex-Bodyguard Steve Stanulis on ’15 Days With Kanye’ Documentary

• Steve Stanulis is a filmmaker who worked security for Kanye West in 2016. 
• He wants to put his time working for the rapper behind him and made a documentary to do so. 
• Stanulis said that “15 Days With Kanye” will be the last word on his time working for West.

To make a tell-all documentary about a story you’ve spent years trying to escape might seem counterintuitive. 

But when a Google alert detected a 2022 article once again linking Steve Stanulis to his former client Kanye West, now known as Ye, Stanulis decided to “just fucking do it.”

And so he did. “15 Days With Kanye,” a documentary produced by Stanulis, along with Dolce Productions and Jennifer DiLandro, debuted at the New York City International Film Festival in January, where it won the award for best documentary. 

from on Vimeo.

A former police officer, Stanulis worked for Ye in 2016 as part of his security detail. However, a highly-publicized dispute brought the job to a swift end after only 15 days. New York Daily News reported that Stanulis had been fired for speaking with Ye’s then-wife Kim Kardashian as she was preparing for the Met Gala, though sources close to the couple disputed the claim to TMZ. Stanulis then told the Daily Mail that he didn’t “hit on” Kardashian but instead introduced himself, after which he was left behind and told he wouldn’t be needed the following day after speaking with her. He also spoke in the interview about West not treating him with “respect.”

That was nearly seven years ago. The bodyguard turned film producer has since helped helm films like 2022’s “Monica,” an intimate drama that premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. Even with a critically acclaimed indie and an ever-expanding résumé, Stanulis feels he “cannot escape.”

Photographs of Stanulis standing outside a Brooklyn club with Khloé Kardashian’s ex, Tristan Thompson, circulated in 2018. In 2021, he was named in a TikTok user’s hoax claiming that Stanulis had facilitated a secret rendezvous between the influencer and Ye (Stanulis sent him a cease and desist). His name also continues to appear in Ye-adjacent media, like this 2022 Sports Manor post reporting unsubstantiated rumors about Ye, Kim Kardashian, and the NBA player Chris Paul. The piece had nothing to do with Stanulis but included an entire section about him anyway. 

Throughout “15 Days With Kanye,” Stanulis, his friends, and his family insist that he’d like to break loose from the centripetal force of the celebrity controversy. 

“You are not gonna get away from it no matter what you do, it’s gonna be a part of you anyway,” Stanulis told Insider. “So embrace it, put it to bed, and go from there.”

Stanulis said that his association with Kanye has affected his career

It’s difficult to reconcile Stanulis’ narrative of constantly getting dragged back into Ye’s orbit when he’s spoken voluntarily several times about his time working for the rapper, such as on the “Hollywood Raw Podcast” in 2020.

Stanulis maintains that he doesn’t invoke the past gig for clout and says in the documentary that he only began to speak out about the Met Gala controversy when he wasn’t paid promptly by the gig’s third-party employer. 

When Stanulis made comments in the media about Kardashian’s Paris robbery, he told Insider that he was speaking in his capacity as a former police officer. He wasn’t trying to provide “dirt” on the couple, but commenting on whether or not he could have prevented it if he were still detailing them.

“I’m not Batman,” Stanulis said. 

The issue for him, he told Insider, is about his reputation.

Stanulis said that “every single time” he did something, like “Monica” or his 2020 film “5th Borough,” conversations would “always go back to Kanye and I.” 

“If I was trying to find an investor that didn’t know me, and they Google me, they’d be like, ‘He’s not a filmmaker, he’s a fucking bodyguard,'” said Stanulis. 

While ’15 Days With Kanye’ may not fully reclaim the narrative, it’s provided some closure for Stanulis

Many of the stories that Stanulis tells in “15 Days With Kanye” are ones that he’s told before and could “recite” while “doing my bills,” he told Insider. There aren’t any exceptionally high stakes in the documentary, nor will the film change anyone’s perception of Ye, Stanulis said.

(It’s worth noting that in recent months, Ye has done more to tarnish his own legacy than Stanulis likely ever could, primarily through antisemitic comments, as well as other problematic statements about slavery and his troubling social-media posts about his ex-wife and her former boyfriend Pete Davidson.)

It’s unclear if the documentary, which Stanulis doesn’t have concrete plans to release after its screening at the New York City International Film Festival, will be able to wholly reclaim a narrative challenged by supernova celebrities and cemented by seven years of tabloid coverage.

A Staten Island native and father of three, Stanulis’ life certainly doesn’t seem to revolve around being Kanye’s ex-bodyguard, but I do understand where he’s coming from. The film’s creation and release represent a kind of closure, a final word on Stanulis’ own terms. Well, maybe. 

“Once this is over if we ever speak again, and I mention Kanye, then I will give you whatever,” Stanulis told me. “Then I lose a bet.”