Keke Palmer Recalls Co-Star’s ‘Weighted’ Racist Comment
November 13, 2024
Keke Palmer is getting candid about the racism and microaggressions she experienced on the Scream Queens set.
Keke Palmer is gearing up to release a new memoir, where she opens up about everything—including the racist incident she experienced on the set of Scream Queens.
In her new memoir, Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative, the Emmy-winning actress and TV star opens up about the sacrifices and self-control it took to reach her success. Reflecting on pivotal moments with The LA Times, Palmer shares an incident from her time on Scream Queens, where she kept her composure after a white co-star made a racist remark while she attempted to calm them down.
“Keke, literally, just don’t. Who do you think you are? Martin F— Luther King?” the co-star, whom she refers to as “Brenda” shouted out.
Palmer writes that Brenda became frustrated after a clash with a colleague. The Akeelah and the Bee star attempted to ease tensions by encouraging everyone to “have fun and show respect for one another.” That’s when Brenda lashed out at Palmer in a racist rage and spewed the MLK remark.
“It was such a weighted thing that she said, but I didn’t allow that weight to be projected on me because I know who I am,” Palmer says. “I’m not no victim. That’s not my storyline, sweetie. I don’t care what her ass said. If I allow what she said to cripple me, then she would.”
Palmer chose not to name the person involved, explaining that she wanted to remove the power from their words and keep the focus off them. However, while she refused to name the actress, social media has started doing their investigating to determine who the racist culprit is.
Many are convinced that the co-star is actress Lea Michele, whom many noted is the only Scream Queens alum Palmer doesn’t follow on Instagram.
“Considering she doesn’t follow Lea Michele, it was probably her,” one person tweeted.
Palmer delves into her challenging experiences during her two seasons on Ryan Murphy’s Scream Queens, including a tense call from the director reprimanding her for not showing up on her scheduled day off.
“It was kind of like I was in the dean’s office,” she says now, reflecting on the interaction. “He was like, ‘I’ve never seen you behave like this. I can’t believe that you, out of all people, would do something like this.’”
She recounts being given her shooting schedule and planning another business commitment for a scheduled day off. However, when that day arrived, production informed her she was actually needed on set. Instead, Palmer chose to honor her prior commitment, prompting Murphy’s angry call. Murphy “ripped” into her, accusing her of being unprofessional.
Palmer apologized and assumed things were smoothed over—until a few days later, a Scream Queens co-star visited her trailer and told her the situation was “bad.”
The veteran actress felt like the co-star was “trying to make me scared or something, which was a little irritating,” she writes.
While she hoped to become a recurring face in Murphy’s many productions, she feels she ended her working relationship with the American Horror Story creator by standing up for herself.
“I’m still not sure Ryan cared or got it, and that’s okay because he was just centering his business, which isn’t a problem to me,” she writes in the book. “But what I do know is even if he didn’t care, and even if I never work with him again, he knows that I, too, see myself as a business.”
Keke Palmer’s “Master of Me” memoir will be released on Nov. 19, 2024, in print and as an ebook.
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