Keke Palmer Worries That Fame Has Gotten ‘Godlike.’ Here’s What Keeps Her Human
Keke Palmer is The Cut’s latest cover star. However, as she snapped the cover photos — glamorous but low-key — and sat with writer Danya Issawi for an interview, the father of her 4 month-old son had chastised her online for wearing a revealing dress in a video that quickly went viral of Usher serenading her at his residency. “It’s the outfit tho.. you a mom,” Darius Jackson said, retweeting the video. He faced swift and widespread backlash, doubled down, deactivated his Twitter and Instagram accounts, and returned without apologizing for what many saw as his misogynistic shaming of Palmer. He reportedly removed all photos of Palmer from his Instagram grid. At press time, there is one photo set of Palmer on his page, posted on Valentine’s Day.
Discourse around Jackson’s remarks and Palmer’s relationship still hasn’t quite died down. She’s since playfully engaged with the drama, saying she wished she had taken more pictures of that night. She posted a TikTok of her dancing and lip-syncing a remixed clip of herself saying, “You ain’t stoppin’ what’s goin’ on with me sweetheart, so if you gon’ act up, I’m ’bout to link up,” from an interview that many online recirculated after Jackson’s comments. She even began selling a crewneck that reads, “I’m a motha.”
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Although in last week’s interview, published today, July 10, Palmer doesn’t specifically address the dust-up, she makes plain her philosophies on fame, having lived under a microscope since she was a child actor. She’s become known for her unflinching outgoingness, whether it be confessing that she didn’t recognize Vice President Dick Cheney in what became a legendary meme or revealing the cystic acne she’s struggled with.
“As I confront my issues head-on and I’m like, ‘Well, I feel terrible about this,’ or, ‘This ain’t work for me,’ I turn it into a joke, but I don’t ignore it,” Palmer told The Cut. “I try not to hide it. Confident people, it’s not that they’re not insecure, it’s that they just accept the fact that they’re going to have some insecurities, work on them when they can, and love themselves. Because at the end of the day, what else are you going to do? Hate yourself for who you’re not?”
She does see value in being so publicly embraced, especially online. This year, she told Rolling Stone, “It’s appreciated when people do the meme thing. I really do love it. I feel like the memes are [people] recognizing that they see themselves in me, which I think is important.”
Still, Palmer sees her public persona as a bit of an alter-ego. In fact, her birth name is Lauren Keyana Palmer, not Keke. “I’m Peter Parker at the end of the day, and at some point, I have to take the suit off,” she told The Cut. “It’s still me, I’m still there. It’s still Keke and there’s no Lauren without Keke. There’s no Keke without Lauren. But it’s just one aspect of who I am.”
Finding time to take off that suit, live in Lauren, and recharge Keke has given her a sense of balance. It allows her to know that her worth is not inextricably tied to her work or her having a bubbly personality. “Sometimes I feel like I would love a little bit of more anonymity, or at least a version that wasn’t so chaotic,” she said. “We live in a particular generation where the fame thing is a little bit too much. Popularity to some degree is fine. It’s normal. It could be expected, especially if you’re a public servant or someone that’s a public figure. But now it’s the desire and the goal as opposed to being the aftereffect of being good at something or being known for something. It’s just being known to be known.”
Society’s persistent — and perhaps aggressive — obsession with celebrity seems to worry Palmer. “Fame used to be a little bit more mayor-like, and now it’s almost gone to some type of godlike vibe,” she told The Cut. “That can be quite dangerous and a lot of pressure. I don’t think any human should be that adored.”
Palmer actually does see her entertainment as a public service, much like politics, though she told The Cut that few people hold the same view. “For me, there’s an element to it that says, ‘[How] am I doing more for my community?'” she also told Rolling Stone. “As a Black person, there’s so [many] systemic things that have stopped us from being able to do shit. Personally, for me, there is an attraction to being able to leave something behind and do something outside of myself.”
She admitted to being nervous ahead of a recent interview she conducted with Vice President Kamala Harris on her own podcast, Baby, This Is Keke Palmer. To her, it required both respect for the VP’s position, and also an acknowledgement of the significant disconnect between young people and government that she sees. “It’s beyond just getting people to vote,” Palmer told The Cut.
“A lot of this is starting to look like a joke and has been a joke and looks like a reality show and it just seems like a big money grab and it just doesn’t seem real,” she went on. “I wanted that interview to be something that we felt was real so we can actually be engaged.”
Palmer did think she might have gotten into politics herself if she wasn’t a performer. When asked if she could be president, she said, “If the president’s job is to be a figurehead, speak to the issues, encourage the people, represent them and create a positive democracy and good morale, then, yeah, I mean, I could. Child, sign me up.” Still, she conveyed that the most important job politicians must tackle is solving thorny problems, and she’s not sure she has the answers.
Beyond fame and politics, Palmer got into the metaphysical perspective that grounds her. She shared her belief that in the afterlife, we’ll realize our earthly problems were never “that deep.” “I think we come here and we put this suit on, and the suit is actually what makes life really hard,” she said. “Because what comes with humanity and being a human person, as opposed to being an animal, or a rock, or something like that, is our very heightened consciousness and awareness that is sometimes competitive with our spiritual thing that doesn’t actually need words, or language, or actions to just be and understand. And we confuse ourselves when we’re down here.”
She said that she thinks we “go to nothing” after we die. “We’re beholden to nothing, we have no attachments, we’re completely and utterly free, and we know in whatever this energy space is that we are all interconnected,” she explained. “So there’s such a freedom and such a happiness. It’s not necessarily we’re riding roller coasters and stuff. We don’t need those things. The happiness and joy is purely innately within us as a spiritual being.”
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