Keke Palmer Says Her Family Struggled to Relate to Her After She Became Famous: 'We Were All Being Traumatized by Fame'
Keke Palmer Says Her Family Struggled to Relate to Her After She Became Famous: 'We Were All Being Traumatized by Fame'
Tommy McArdle, Lizzie HymanMon, June 15, 2026 at 5:34 PM UTC
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Keke Palmer (center) with members of her family at the premiere of 'Nope' on July 18, 2022Credit: Gilbert Flores/Variety/Penske Media via Getty -
Keke Palmer opened up about feeling like she and her family members could not relate to each other when she was first experiencing fame as a teenager
Palmer broke out with the 2006 movie Akeelah and the Bee and starred in a number of television shows early in her career
The actress and singer most recently starred in I Love Boosters; she has also released two albums in the last three years
Keke Palmer found fame as a teenager with movies like Akeelah and the Bee and her Nickelodeon sitcom True Jackson, VP, but the actress says she and her family struggled as her status in Hollywood grew at such a young age.
"I remember it was just nobody could relate to me, and the thing about my family is my family has always been so awesome, but there was a period where we were all being traumatized by fame," Palmer, 32, said, during a moderated conversation with Whoopi Goldberg during the Tribeca Festival's Storytellers series on Monday, June 8. "They had a more relatable experience to the trauma of the fame than I did, right? Because I was the star. They were the people in the star shadow."
"So it's easier for them, I think, to understand each other than it was for them to understand me because they're still trying to understand and metabolize their very crazy experience while I'm experiencing what it's like for everybody around me to be now affected by everybody's perceiving me when really I'm the same I've always been," Palmer remembered. "And I just was so sad, you guys. I really was so sad. I was so sad that I wished I could feel the pain of it because it was not physical. It was so deep in my soul and in my heart that I felt numb or something like that because it was like no way to get it out of me."
Keke Palmer and Angela Bassett in 2006's Akeelah and the BeeCredit: Lionsgate/Kobal/Shutterstock
Palmer's parents Sharon and Lawrence "Larry" Palmer share three other children — twins Lawrence and Lawrencia and oldest daughter Loreal — in addition to Keke, the family's middle child. The family relocated to Los Angeles from Illinois in order for Keke to pursue a career in the entertainment industry.
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The actress made her screen acting debut in 2004's Barbershop 2: Back in Business and was a regular on the big screen and small screen by the end of the 2000s. She's maintained success as an adult; in recent years, Keke has starred in movies like Nope, One of Them Days, Good Fortune and I Love Boosters. She also released the albums Big Boss and Just Keke in a return to her singing career, too.
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Keke Palmer with her sisters Lawrencia Palmer and Loreal Palmer on Sept. 21, 2023Credit: Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty
During the Tribeca Festival event, Palmer recalled feeling that "nobody really wants to get to know me" when she was first experiencing fame and worried that she was solely responsible for her family's financial stability. "[I felt] the more that I try to get people to know the real me, the more that they just talk to this character, the more that they just want me to be happy and smiling and if I show any complexity of my emotions or I show that I'm a kid, I show that I'm sad, I show that I'm down, I show that I'm tired, that I'm exhausted from these things, they just get mad at me and I don't want my family to lose everything," she said.
These days, Keke still shares her home in Los Angeles with her family. She shares the home with her two sisters, their kids and Keke's own son Leodis, 3, whom she shares with ex-boyfriend Darius Jackson, per a recent Architectural Digest home tour.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
