Before ‘Earle Meets World’, Ashley Dupré Got Kelly Cutrone Fired on ‘Kell on Earth’
by Chrissy Stockton · Thought CatalogUpdated 2 minutes ago, September 13, 2026
Ashley Earle’s history with reality television runs deeper than her latest Netflix appearance suggests.
Long before she surfaced on “Earle Meets World,” she was at the center of an incident that cost publicist Kelly Cutrone’s firm, People’s Revolution, one of its designer clients. The trouble began when Ashley Dupré — as she was then known — took a front-row seat at Yigal Azrouël’s February 2009 New York Fashion Week show.
At the time, Dupré was already nationally recognized as “Kristen,” the escort linked to the Eliot Spitzer scandal. She had not been invited to the show as a client of the fashion house, but Cutrone knew her from earlier conversations about finding a publicist and refused to have her removed.
Azrouël fired People’s Revolution after the show, citing “mismanagement.” Cutrone told the Daily News that Dupré would have been treated like a hero had she walked into Marc Jacobs, adding, “I’ve been fired before, and I’ll be fired again.” The fallout became part of Cutrone’s reality series, “Kell on Earth.”
Dupré would later become Ashley Earle. Months after the Spitzer scandal, she met TJ Earle — the still-married father of Alix and Ashtin Earle — at a bar. Their affair drew another wave of tabloid coverage, Alisa and TJ split, and TJ married Ashley in 2013.
Today, Ashley is part of the family story told in Netflix’s “Earle Meets World,” appearing alongside her stepdaughters and her children with TJ. The series revisits the family’s history, and Alix Earle has also spoken about the affair and its impact on her podcast, “Call Her Daddy.”
Thanks for reading. Follow Thought Catalog on Facebook for more stories like this, or explore our website.