We can all agree that actor-singer-CEO-author-mother Keke Palmer works hard. She’s earned a reputation as one of the most employed and employable women in Hollywood—Keke “Keep a Bag” Palmer; Keke “Keep a Check” Palmer; shining star of blockbuster movies like Hustlers and Nope; Emmy-winning host of NBC’s Password; mastermind behind her digital entertainment network, KeyTV, and her podcast, Baby, This Is Keke Palmer; hair-care brand Creme of Nature’s new chief brand officer. But what is also true, and what she perhaps doesn’t get as much credit for, is that Palmer does the work. This is evident when you read her new memoir/self-help book, Master of Me, and in conversation with her. Palmer doesn’t just know and accept herself; she actively manages herself.
Palmer, 31, seems to intuitively understand that you can’t successfully build a great career or follow your calling—and for her, those two paths are very much intertwined—if you aren’t right with yourself. This level of self-actualization isn’t necessarily what you’d expect from a child star who made her show business debut at the age of 11 and who had played the title characters in a critically acclaimed movie, a Nickelodeon sitcom, and a Broadway show by the time she turned 21. That Palmer has successfully navigated the famously difficult transition to being a working actor in adulthood is, of course, the result of her undeniable talents and charisma, but it’s hard not to also credit the fact that she’s so self-possessed. The woman is willing to invest in herself in every sense of the word; of course her future is bright.
“Everything feels kind of possible in terms of the skills that I’ve learned up until this point that allow me to move forward,” Palmer tells me during an early-morning Zoom call in October. “I can do it with the right mindset, with the right practices. Nothing is the end of the world.” And she’s realizing she actually has a lot more time than she felt she did in her 20s. “I have a greater sense of perspective. There’s also a level of contentment—I don’t have to prove anything to anybody.”
Master of Me is an exploration of what getting to such a rooted place looks like in practice. The book is a confident statement of self—an emotionally honest reflection of who she is, where she came from, and how she lives her values—and a manual to help others access heightened self-awareness and deep fulfillment.
Palmer gets “immense joy” from facilitating self-discovery in others, and her desire to be of service is tangible: “The truth is this: I never really wanted to be a performer, but I always wanted to make people feel something deeply,” she writes in Master of Me. “For me, the essence of the human experience lies in emotions—the capacity to feel, to connect, to empathize.” Irony, indifference, and detachment from our feelings is isolating, but facing uncomfortable emotions head-on is “where the true magic happens—the sweet spot where pain makes way for connection and community. This outlook on the human experience has not only informed my work but creates the drive for it.”
All of this from the woman who gave us “Sorry to this man”? Baby, that’s Keke Palmer.
RWM: How are you doing today?
KP: I’m doing good. I was a little tired—moving around so much, trying to get rest, mind’s not able to relax. I’ve also gotten addicted to Ancestry.com so I literally have been up all night doing that. But other than that, I’m really good. I’m in Atlanta getting ready to film a movie.
Wait, what got you into Ancestry.com?
I think I was just thinking about history, how my family moves and how it’s very village-esque. And I started looking at the meeting of Westernism and African diasporic ideals as it pertains to Black Americans.
Oh, just casual!
Right, right! I was looking at where that places Black Americans, our philosophies that we follow as a people, and then what we know, growing up as Americans. That made me think about my history, my family. And so then I was like, Well, maybe I could find more information. And I found myself on Ancestry.com and it goes far. I’m literally up all night getting into it being like, Did y’all know…?!
Is there anything you’ve found so far that’s a little spooky or surprising?
So my grandmother’s great-grandparents were…one of them was a biracial woman—half-white—and then the plantation owner’s son. He wasn’t married to her, obviously. She was a free woman and she took him to court. I was really shocked—they had the actual case documents of her being like, “Andy Ivy, you need to give money for our son!”
That’s incredible. Do you feel any connection to her—like, Okay, I’m not the first person in my family to call somebody out?
When I saw that, I was like, This makes so much sense. Not just for me, but also for my grandmother, my mom—they are so like, I’m going to get the help I need. I’m going to find a way by any means necessary. So 1,000%, when I saw that, I was like, Violet, I can’t believe that you did this, girl. That was so shocking to me, at that time period.
One of the things I wanted to ask you about was the double-edged sword that is the “strong Black woman” archetype. On the one hand, I have no doubt that you have your shit together…but that stereotype doesn’t always make space for softness or vulnerability, and it can feel dehumanizing. And for someone like you—the entertainer, cracking jokes—I’m wondering if that ever affects you?
It does affect me. I think that’s why I’m funny, honestly, because it is the best way I’ve learned to get what I’m saying across. I don’t think that it’s received when I’m crying, you know what I mean? Or when I’m really sad, or expressing it in this tender way. It hits people more when I top it off with a joke or some crazy emphasis, which is a part of my personality. But I do think that personalities are often made up of defense mechanisms. You only can be yourself authentically in the way in which you are perceived. And if you’re trying your best to be perceived accurately, there might be different ways that you have to perform for people to resonate with it. It could be because you’re a woman. It could be because you’re Black, it could be because you’re gay, because you’re straight, because you are disabled. Now you have to take into account how people see you. It doesn’t mean that it’s not authentic to you. It is you authentically being intentional about how you show up so that you can get where you want to go.
I think this is why I was looking into [Ancestry.com]. It’s very healing to know again that you’re not alone. While it is exhausting, I’ve learned and I’ve accepted that it is a part of my culture, a part of my cultural experience.
So let’s talk about your book (which is great). In one chapter, you write, “I’ve encountered people who resist joy, just hell-bent on not having laughter in their lives” which is a very real type of person. I was hoping you could talk a little more about why you think folks might act this way.
I think people are like that because they’re bitter. They haven’t learned to forgive; they haven’t learned to have compassion for others. They haven’t learned that things weren’t personal. And so what happens is they internalize it all and they’re reacting to life instead of responding to life, I think.
This is why I always say to forgive—a lot of people don’t want to, but when you forgive, there is a process of deliberation where you take yourself out of the “I was hurt” seat and look at that other person. When you look at them and create a space of compassion for them, that’s what leads to you not taking it personal. That’s what leads to you being objective about what’s happened to you. And that’s the crucial part of you not becoming bitter about all the things that happen to you—because there’s a lot of shit that’s going to happen to everybody in life. There’s nobody that’s going to come out unscathed.
We treat people how we treat ourselves. I’m a forgiving person. I’m a compassionate person because I’m forgiving and compassionate to myself. I realized those were really important things that I had to learn, and you only learn them in relation to others. You know what I mean?
My dad always used to tell me, “Keke, you hold a lot of grudges. That’s not good for you.” Or he would say, “You can’t take everything personal. It’s not good for you.” I wouldn’t understand it at the time, but I think when I was younger, I did hold a lot of grudges and it was truly suffocating for me. I felt so isolated in my experience and I blamed everyone around me. Even though when I look back on it now, they were isolated in their own reality and I never really told them how I felt. I never really told anybody. I was just writing it in my journal.
I think that’s what he was trying to help me understand—that these are typical growing pains. Your parents are going to disappoint you, your siblings are going to disappoint you. These are rites of passage. And I think he was trying to help me understand that if you want to have any long-term relationships in your life with family, with friends, with loved ones, with people that are actually good people—not perfect, but they’re actually good people—you’re not going to be able to have grudges. You’re not going to be able to have unrealistic expectations. You’re going to have to have grace for them and for you.
You mentioned isolation, and fame strikes me as something that could be a very lonely experience. It forces you to withhold parts of yourself to protect your privacy, and there’s also the fact that most people simply can’t relate to it. I’m curious if that rings true to you—if it feels lonely to you, and if it does, how do you deal with that?
It is lonely. How I deal with it is to not center myself. I think about all the other people who feel weird in the world, because if we take all the glamour out of it, and all the specifics and uniqueness of what it means to be famous, it just means feeling weird. I think everybody in the world feels extraordinarily alienated, and we feel even more alienated when we alienate others. And that’s what comes with fame. I’m known around the world and now I’m even less able to connect to the very people that I would want to use my fame to connect to. That was probably the hardest part.
We all feel deeply, deeply alone. That’s why many of us create families. That’s why many of us find communities, groups to be a part of. That’s why many of us find churches. Shit, some of us find cults! We’re all alone, and we’re looking for a sense of shared aloneness. And I think that essentially as an entertainer, it’s the same thing. There’s a level of being ostracized through fame, but everybody goes through it. It’s not necessarily unique; it feels that way to others and to ourselves at times, but it’s just its own brand of the human experience.
Speaking of community: Who makes up yours? Who are your people?
My family. Outside of my family, I think it’ll be people that have a sense of faith. Not necessarily religious, but people who believe in boundaries and want to do good in the world, that have a moral compass. Obviously we live in a capitalist society and I don’t blame or judge anyone for making money because—look, this is a system that was created before us, make your money. But if we have personal and independent philosophies outside of the system we live in that are based in community and knowing just, Well, let’s do what we can for one another when we can. Those are my people, you know what I’m saying? Who care about how they can manage themselves, really looking at the world from a place of, How can I be of service and make it better?
That all came through to me when I was reading your book; it also really resonated with me when you mentioned being raised Catholic and how that influenced you. I don’t consider myself Catholic anymore, but being raised that way had an overall positive effect on me—that sense of service, of true generosity. Somebody needs a babysitter or a ride, and people jump in and offer to help. That’s how I was raised.
I think it is cultural—like you’re saying, even if you’re not Catholic, people went to church for community. Obviously, they went for the Word, I’m sure some people were super dogmatic, and then others were like me and my family: We’re just looking for community and people like us. We are here for what they’re saying, but we ain’t trying to hurt nobody. We just want love. We want acceptance. We want a community for our kids. Those are the things that ripple out—regardless of whether there’s a denomination, it’s like: What is the foundation of what you believe to be true in life? I think some of that can be found in church, but it could be found at school, at camp, whatever people have.
And I try to make that clear in the book too. I’m just so big on…again, I’m trying to be of service, and a part of that is not putting everything that I believe onto you. I can only tell you how I’ve gotten where I’ve gotten based on my experience. And for me, God is an integral part. How I was raised in the Church is an integral part. But I also want people that weren’t raised like that or have had horrible experiences with the Church or don’t know how they feel about God to know that this book is also in service to you. I have you in mind.
All I’m saying is to define and outline your value system. It don’t have to include any of the things that I’m including in mine, but you do need to know what it is, because that’s going to be your north star. Whatever that is defined by is going to help you align yourself with people, communities, and even work that’s for you.
In the book, you write about the period after Leo was born and describe intense anxiety and fear, and you say you’ve “leveled out” now. I’m curious how you got there—what helped you get through what sounds like a really destabilizing time?
Therapy. I was in therapy. I also worked out, was journaling a bit, and spending a lot of time with my family. Family is everything to me, and my family has always been there for me. Everybody done gone through hard times. My mama’s had four kids, my sister’s had three. We’ve all dealt with hardship when it comes to mentally not feeling like you got it today. And they were there for me. They understand me. They had my back. That was it.
You also write, “I yearn to be truly selfish out loud, to experience normal struggles of adolescence. I was being forced to grow up too quickly without the chance to experience the carefree joy of childhood.” Are you finding ways to get some of that childhood back?
I am, through my son and the things that we do together. But I think an even greater way I’m doing that is through controlling my narrative. Everybody always felt so bad for me, like I was so much better than where I came from—when the reality is, I am who I am because of where I came from. I love my parents. We are doing this together. So it’s also a lot of reclaiming the fact that my life may be different, but please don’t pity me and don’t make me feel like I’m some kind of sob story, because I’m proud of who I am.
So many people want to tell our stories, and it’s like, everybody got hardship. It always made me feel so weird that everybody wanted me to be so sad about my life or to feel so downtrodden. And it’s like, yeah, there’s struggles and there’s hardship, but this isn’t the tone I prefer.
If we were to sit down a year from now and talk again, what would you hope your life looked like? What would you have liked to be talking about achieving?
Man, I just would love to have so much more to say around KeyTV, my company. What else? Hopefully, at some point, another kid. I grew up with three siblings, so I think it’s really awesome when you have that. I am open for whatever more that God gives me, but if I can just maintain what I have, that’s a blessing.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Photography: Jason Kim. Creative direction: Amber Venerable. Wardrobe Stylist: Dione Davis. Makeup: Kenya Alexis. Hair Stylist: Rico Roberts. Manicurist: Aja Walton. Set Designer: Jacob Burstein. Production: Melissa Kramer. Profile editor: Alisa Hrustic. Research director: Yulia Khabinksy.
