KeKe Palmer is the latest teenage star on the rise. She’s already stared as a lead role alongside Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne in Akeelah & The Bee and played a supporting role alongside Samuel L. Jackson in the Cleaner. Besides the acting, she also can sing, but last year she had a public battle with her label about the songs that were way too mature for the 14-year-old to sing. She also has her own Nickelodeon TV show starting this fall. In an age where Miley Cyrus has been criticized for her image and Jamie Lynn Spears had a child at 16, KeKe Palmer wants to be a role model and sing about the songs that relate to her. She’s not in a rush to be pushed as this older sexy girl.Palmer heads back to the big screen this coming weekend staring with Ice Cube as the first girl to play football in the Pop Warner League in The Longshots.
Listen to the Keke Palmer Interview
Chris Yandek: These last few years young lady have been your coming out party. What have you learned about yourself since you were put on this stage and introduced to the world?
Keke Palmer: “I love not just necessarily proving myself, but just showing people what I’ve got. I really love that. That’s why I love acting when I work really hard to show people I can handle the role and when I get on set and show people I can handle the scene, didn’t necessarily know I like this much but I do.”
CY: Congrats on the new Nickelodeon show. What are your thoughts on it?
KP: “I was really excited when I heard about the show because it was such a cool thing about it that it was fashion, 15-year-old girl getting a job as a vice president. That was so awesome. The writers were so great and the way the script was written and amazing so I definitely wanted to be a part of it. I finally got to talk to Nickelodeon and I wanted to go down and audition and from then on I want this part…I want this part. Thank goodness I got it.”
CY: How important is it for you being a positive role model?
KP: “It means a lot to me. I know a lot of young girls may not have someone that’s their age or around right now that they can say I really want to be like her or she really does a lot of good things and I want to be like her. I just feel like since Akeelah & The Bee, I felt where that movie was taking me. People saw me in that movie and they were really inspired and I feel like I need to continue to make good movies like that and continue to keep people inspired and young girls saying I can do this. I can be what I want to be. I can be like that. I can do this. I don’t have to be afraid of what people think because that’s just who I am.”
CY: There was a very public battle with you and your mom against your record label about what type of songs they wanted you to sing and what you wanted to put out there. Was it difficult being told what you should be and sing compared to what you wanted to be?
KP: “I think we all overcome obstacles. People want to make you into something you’re not. I’ve been offered movie roles where people typecast me because I am an African American girl. It’s just things that come in life and you just have to learn how to deal with them especially in the entertainment business. I wasn’t necessarily oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. That’s just where they wanted me to go and we had conflict of interest of what I wanted to be. We just told them continuously that we were going to do young, fun music. Something like a Brandy or Aaliyah and cool music that didn’t insinuate me and put me in a bad light. They wanted me to do a little older and music and we were like no so we had to separate.”
CY: Yeah. You really care about that image you’re putting out there in today’s age. We look at Miley Cyrus who had some racy photos. You look at Jamie Lynn Spears she got pregnant. These girls are your age. What does someone like you say whose kind of in a similar situation with the fame, all these compliments at a young age, and say I don’t want to be like that? What do you say to yourself when you see all this other stuff going on?
KP: “I just say that a lot of people have mistakes, especially growing up and in this business it’s really hard because you have so many people around you that you may think are your friends or so many adults around you that you think do like your personality and really they just want a little bit of their five minutes of fame. It’s hard to choose from whose real and whose not. Thankfully I have my parents by my side helping me do so. When people go through problems in the entertainment business, they’re a lot more broadcasted than young kids in just little suburbs and cities and that maybe go and do the same thing they’re just not as publicly announced. When things like that happen I just like to say you know, just keep pushing. You gotta keep it rolling and you can’t dwell on things too long because you can sit there and saying all my life I wish I didn’t do this or I wish I didn’t do that and you’ll never move on because all you’re wishing is that you didn’t do something.”
CY: But are we portraying these younger girls like you, Miley Cyrus, and Jamie Lynn Spears as these younger adults when you guys are still going through all these things? Are we putting too much on you or are we giving you too much too fast?
KP: “I think a lot of time in the entertainment business where you see a kid on TV or you see somebody doing big acting roles sometimes you make them live up to an expectation to the level that you forget they’re just a kid. I know sometimes in situations I feel like wow you’re expecting a lot out of me and I am just 14 years old. Sometimes people can forget. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. People forget all the time and I just try to remind them, but in situations where people don’t realize that you just have to step back and say hey, this is too much. You’re putting too much pressure on me. Look, I made a mistake. I am a kid. It doesn’t make me any different because I have a job and I am on TV all the time. I am still a child and nothing has changed. I still have to go to bed at a certain time. I still have to clean my room. I still have to take out the trash. I still have rules and regulations, but it doesn’t mean I won’t do them because I am an actor.”
CY: In your upcoming film The Longshots, you play a young girl Jasmine who is the first girl to play in the Pop Warner Football League. What kind of football training did you have to do for this role?
KP: “I had to train for about four weeks learning the mechanics and all this type of stuff for the movie and it was a lot of fun. I had a great coach who taught me really great moves and I just had a lot of fun doing it and I was even better than some of the boys.”
CY: I look at this girl in this role and she’s kind of a loner and she has a unique life. Do you relate to this character? Is this girl somewhat like you?
KP: “Maybe. When I was in kindergarten all the way up to third grade, I was kind of an introvert. I didn’t really talk too much. I still talk. That’s just my personality. I was a little bit more quiet in school than I was outside of school. Most of her isn’t like me. I had to really act.”
CY: Did you get to spend some time with the real girl who the story is based off of?
KP: “Yeah I did. She came down to Louisiana while we were filming the movie and she was really…really cool. She was different than I expected. I mean if you think of a girl whose playing in football as a quarterback you think she’s gonna be really buff and she was a tomboy. She was just like me, this girl. She was really cool and it was good to meet her. She told me a lot of cool stories about the real life experience.”
CY: If you could be a National Spelling Bee Champion or the first girl to play in the NFL, what would it be?
KP: “The first girl to play in the NFL. I just think that’s so cool. I don’t know why. (Laughs)”
CY: Favorite team? Anyone you enjoy watching? Favorite player?
KP: “I like Christine Thomas, well she’s not in the NFL, but she use to play sports. In the NFL I guess I like Peyton Manning.”
CY: Looking back at Akeelah & The Bee, I had a chance to spend some time with your co-star Angela Bassett this past spring and as you know she is a serious actress. Did she rub off on you in any way during that movie?
KP: “Yeah she did. Her and Mr. Fishburne were very…very nurturing to me in my career and just during Akeelah & The Bee. The thing where I had to cry Ms. Bassett helped me a whole lot. She just told me to think of something if everyone in my life didn’t want to help you anymore. We don’t want to be there for you. How would I feel? I just thought about that and I started crying.”
CY: What was the most important piece of advice she gave you?
KP: “Just to stay true to who I was and I never forgot that. Mr. Fishburne just told me keep working hard. Get to that level and just stay determined.”
CY: Looking at the Cleaner with Samuel L. Jackson, you played his daughter who was really concerned about losing him like her mother. What do you think has been your key to acting out these dramatic and emotional scenes and being able to portray them so real like you’re really in that character and really in that situation?
KP: “I just have to think what if that really did happen to me? What if my mom died? What would happen if my mom died? What would I do? I just have to sit there and think about that for a long time and then boom I cry.”
CY: Was there also a bond between you and Samuel like Angela Bassett?
KP: “Oh yeah. He was like an uncle to me. He was so awesome. He was a lot of fun.”
CY: Finally, what is the biggest misconception about you and what should we know about you that we don’t?
KP: “People just think I am really…really shy and quiet and all this and I am not. I’m really…really crazy and all this type of stuff. When they see my show True Jackson VP on Nickelodeon, they can see who I really am because she is just like me. My real name is Lauren. No. People know that already. I like calamari, which is squid.”
