Keke Palmer Is Building a Family Business

Entertainment has, historically, been dominated by rarified dynastic legacies. For every Spelling, Fonda, or Coppola, there’s a multitude of offspring with these famous last names, all vying for a foothold within the industry. In more recent times, new players have emerged, ones previously unsupported by the traditional old guard. The introduction of names like Kaling, Zhao, Rhimes, and Gerwig into the canon mean that women, immigrants, and people of color are cracking through the status quo. And there’s another name working for a position as a strong contender for this new-era Hollywood mogul category: Palmer.

In roles both behind, and in front of the camera, Keke Palmer has graced screens for the better part of two decades. Seventeen years ago, she starred in the Nickelodeon series True Jackson, VP where she almost prophetically played a teenage executive. She’s had the boss role ever since.

She parlayed her impeccable comedic timing to starring roles in One of Them Days and the forthcoming The ‘Burbs, both of which she executive produced. In The ‘Burbs, which premieres on Peacock in February, Palmer plays a new mom and curious lawyer trying to uncover answers to a creepy suburban mystery after moving back to the cul-du-sac where her husband grew up. Her role in it is quirky, wry, and quintessentially Keke Palmer. These days, there’s rarely a project that she tackles that doesn’t have her signature fingerprint on it.

At 32, Palmer is impressively and successfully managing to juggle acting, producing, podcasting, singing, and launching a fitness app all while being a mom to her almost-three-year son Leodis “Leo” Jackson. Did I mention she’s a New York Times best-selling author? And that pretty soon, she'll also be certified to teach you Pilates? Any introduction of Palmer’s career would make even the most seasoned emcee breathless. She’s accomplished a lot, and frankly, it’s easy to brag about Palmer because in addition to being unfairly talented in just about every sector, she’s just so damn likable. She’s someone that you want to hang out with and take business advice from at the same time. Her natural charisma is infectious and arresting.

It's something I discovered while talking to Palmer through a computer screen while she was on location filming in Australia. She showed up on time, ginger-haired, fresh-faced, and eager to talk. I, unfortunately, had to wear my pajamas and no makeup, both a personal choice and evidence that the 15-hour time difference was not in my favor. We both wore our glasses though, because mogul-talk is serious business. We touched on everything from money management to nepo-parenting to dating. She’s even planning to spend 15 days alone for the first time in Bali. But before that, she’s got just a few things to say about building her own empire, brick by brick.

How many business ventures do you have—and could you name them all?

Outside of the Keke Palmer talent brand, I have KeyTV, which is my incubator where I really work to finance other people's projects and give directors, writers—just everybody across the board—chances where there aren’t any and I try to help democratize the industry. I think a lot of times as a person of color, we don't get to try, and in order to be great, you have to try—and you need money to try, so that's kind of what that's about. And then I have my production company Big Boss Productions; most recently we produced One Of Them Days [a comedy starring Palmer and SZA about two friends trying to find rent money]. I have my wellness division, Practice by Palmer. I'm launching an app in collaboration with my Fabletics line, which is all about wellness; some of my practices, just kind of everything that includes how I've become Keke “Get The Bag” Palmer and how to apply some of the things that I've done with myself to your life as an entrepreneur, but also just as a young woman. What else do I have going on? There's so much and a lot of things happening at once. Music! The podcast [“Baby, This is Keke Palmer”]! We’re moving and we're grooving.

Do you have a favorite child?

That's really hard, because I’m one of those people where my favorite child is also what's in front of me and able to be done right here, right now. So my favorite child right now has been Practice by Palmer, which I just shot all the content for as we get ready to put the app together. I've also been studying to become a Pilates instructor. I love Pilates. I've been doing it for years; working out and training has been a big part of my career since I was like 17 or 18.

But the baseline baby is probably KeyTV and my production company, because that's where I really want things to go. And by go, it doesn't mean that I don't want to perform, because I love performing, but I really want to be able to share what I've learned and I think that's where Practice by Palmer, KeyTV, and Big Boss Productions all kind of connect, because they’re really about me sharing what I've learned. Especially at a time like this, I just want to make sure that I'm being of service—to make somebody laugh, to make somebody feel, to add a moment of escapism that hopefully brings you back to yourself. That's huge for me.

You're still very young, but as you age and get more power within the industry, is it important for you to find jobs to do behind the camera?

That's like the most important to me, especially at this point in my life, in my career. Popularity is a thing that comes and goes in waves. I’ve just learned to leverage it for the things that are important to me and to create impact in terms of longevity. So that’s having systems in place; having things that I've been able to create that can sustain and feed my community and not just me. Especially having my son—and I have my nieces and my nephew—I’m putting things in place that don't just ride the back of me as a singular person, but have a life outside of me as a talent.

I imagine that becoming a mom forces you to make a shift in how you approach work. What has that looked like for you?

Well, a lot of it has included trying to create things, learn things, and do things that allow me to be able to still make a living, but also not always be away all the time. Luckily, I am in an industry that is somewhat—I don’t wanna say relaxed—but just out of the ordinary, meaning my son can visit me on set. He can come hang out in the trailer. That's a blessing. There'll come a time where he'll be in school and he can't fly and travel, and so I’m putting things in place that allow me to work more consistently from one position. That’s what I've also been trying to create for myself so I can actually have a bit more time to be in my everyday mom life.

How do you approach time management now?

I’ve gotten better at it, I think. When I was 26 or so, I started really being conscious about trying to make more time for myself. I always have a good five hours in the morning to myself where I'm waking up early and I'm doing whatever I want to do. I'm going for a walk. I'm going for a run. I'm going and doing a Pilates class. I'm having a little smoothie or a shake. Those rituals really help me to feel secure in myself because those are things that I'm doing with myself. That's been a huge shift for me. And then this year I'm excited because I'm going to be ending the year off going on a solo trip. That's something I've never done before in my life.

Where are you going?

I'm going to Bali! As a teen, you know, I always remember seeing Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love and so it's always been my dream to be Julia Roberts in Bali on my eat, pray, love.

And it's just gonna be you?

It’s just gonna be me, girl.

Are you scared about that?

No, I'm not scared, but I wonder if I'm going to get bored. I just wonder what I'm going to learn about me. I wonder what the time and experience is going to tell me about me. I think I've always felt that alone time was important, but it became glaringly important the older I have gotten, and not only that, but how much I truly enjoy it. I think I got to the point where I was like, Everybody likes spending time with me. I would like to spend time with me too. You know what I mean? I want to experience what y'all are experiencing with my own self.

I feel like when you're younger, you don't have an off button. You're like, I don't need to stop. Have you ever experienced burnout?

I hate the concept of burnout because it feels like it's this creepy thing around the corner waiting for us. When we mention burnout, it sounds like an ending. But I kind of feel like burnout comes and goes. It’s like a meter, that’s like, I gotta reverse, I went too far; let me remind myself to chill it on down. That's how I experience burnout and that's how my response to burnout is like, Oh, I let the iron get too hot. Let me turn it back to a medium. Let me turn it low for a little bit. Then I'll raise it back up, type of thing.

What does the reverse look like for you?

Literally taking a nap—that energy. It's truly, truly, really, really pausing. I just had an experience recently with this project that I'm going to be doing, and the experience of filming the project, it was a little bit too intense. I said to my team, "I'm cool to not do it." That's a version of reverse. It's like the premeditated version, because I already know how this is lining up; it’s gonna burn me the f out. So the answer is, holla at your girl, because if it ain't right, I'm not doing it. Sometimes it's, I'm not doing the thing in order to not have an experience of burnout.

Would you have done that 10 years ago?

No. No. No, no, no.

I had such a different framework of mind. I thought I was doing it for my future self. I have to be honest—I don't know that that was a bad decision.

The reason why I say that is because I think it's important that when we’re trying to achieve something that we’re honest about how uncomfortable it is at times. Sometimes I was really like, I'm hitting the pavement and I can't let up, and I feel like I was right to do it. I don't regret those decisions. Did they cause extreme discomfort sometimes? Sure. But I felt like in that time period, I needed to be like that. I committed 1000 percent to that energy and knew when I could take a breath. When you have high hopes or high concepts and things you're trying, we gotta stop lying and acting like we’re just getting there by being chill. I’ve gone hard in my career. Even now in my career, I know when I need to do that. But I've gotten better at how to balance that.

What are some of the biggest sacrifices you've made for your career?

I had a childhood, but social experiences—really engaging with people my own age—I didn’t have that. To have started working as young as I started and work at the level I was working, I just couldn't do all the things that every other kid was doing. Having those early experiences that help build an intimate character with your peers, I'm very often behind. It's not something I'm mad about. But I'm more aware of it as I get older and I have more experiences with other people my age. I know a lot about business, but I don't really know the difference between how love looks in a rom-com and how it's actually experienced because I didn't experience it in real life. I experienced it in characters. I experienced falling in love in 30 minutes or less. I experienced life through being a performer—oftentimes that's the lens I'm looking through—and that's just not reality.

A lot of times people will see my success and see who I am in business, and they will expect that same thing in my personal life, but just because you’re good at your job doesn't mean that your personal life is like that. And just because your personal life is great, doesn't mean you're good at your job. These are all different skill sets that we're all constantly managing and whatever we put our time into the most is what's going to, you know, be the most “successful.”

Do you feel that your success—and the fact you’ve been working for decades longer than most of your peers—makes it difficult to find a romantic partner?

Yeah, I think it makes it hard to find a romantic partner. I think if I was a man, no. The patriarchy, unfortunately, has a lot to do with it. A lot of men don't want to be considerably overshadowed by their partner and so that becomes the thing. Your partner is constantly trying to not be affected by, or learn how to deal with, being compared to you or being in the shadow of what it means to be with you. I think it's literally any successful woman's plight.

What can you really do with that? There's nothing you really can do. I'm never gonna not be successful. I'm never gonna not be Keke Palmer. I'm never gonna not be the person that's had this career and that's achieved these things and I'm not ashamed of it. If I find a partner that can respect and appreciate that and not feel diminished by that, then great. But also, I could just have friends and lovers for years and I'm cool with that. I'm also the kind of person where I've realized that my life is different, so love, friendships, all those things may look different for me. Growing up, being raised in a traditional home, I think that was hard but how can I expect to have the life that my mother had when I'm not like my mother?

You’ve talked before about being a people pleaser. How did you kind of break out of your people pleasing tendencies?

I'm no longer afraid to be at odds with somebody if I'm not getting the results I want. I remember a commercial that I was doing, and in that commercial, somebody was pushing the time and I had to go somewhere. My mom was always the one who would step up and do that role, but at that point, she wasn't there, so I had to be in that role. I think that broke the seal of me realizing that just because I’m expressing boundaries and limits with people, it doesn't make me a bad person; I'm also expressing my expectations from what they're supposed to supply. From that point on, I've done so many different versions of standing up for myself that directly contradicted being the good kid that I thought I had to be. That could sound mean, and it could be intimidating, it could be weird, but I do think I'm clear that my reasoning is based in solution.

You once said on a podcast that you really like to live below your means. What does money management look like for you?

I'm serious about it because I've been under before, you know what I'm saying? In my industry, you can be making a lot of money at once and then it'll stop. If I can get an Aston Martin, I'm just going to get an Audi because my industry's so up and down. Essentially I’m on the stock market and sometimes it's up and sometimes it's down. I just choose a position that deep fluctuation won't affect and I think that's just what helps me. I remember right before Scream Queens, I moved back in with my parents because I felt like, Why would I have an apartment that I'm not living in and I can't pay for it? I'm using money that I could be saving so I can invest in my other businesses.

Do you think that’s a difficult principle to have in your industry?

I feel like it's about what matters to you. I mean, look, there’ve been moments where people are wanting me to flex more, wanting me to do more, be flashier. Not because I didn't love fashion, but because it was not a priority and what I wanted to invest in. I wanted to invest in my content more than I wanted to invest in being on the carpet and wearing a cool look. I always felt like I cared more about that, the on the ground work, than that more visible work. That's really just a choice. A lot of people would be like, Keke you should be doing more. It just wasn't to me what mattered. I didn't feel like my longevity was in how I looked.

When you think about your career, what still gives you the most grief?

Entertainment is a creative job, but it's a business—or at least that's how I was raised to see it and how I've continually grown to understand it—and so the pain point for me is the balance of being both the creative person and being the person that knows when it's time to change; being the person to know when it's time to hire new people or being the person to understand how or when to invest in a new executive layer; being the person that knows when it's time to let somebody go.

It’s a pain point because it's gambling. We talk about it with stocks, but if you’re a brand or if you have a business, and you’re investing and you get other people who invest as you continue to grow, these are all gambles. I don't like gambling. I can bet on me, but the process of gambling and not knowing when to make what move, even though there's really no failure in it, you need to have this level of confidence about it.

That’s a big pressure on your shoulders.

Honestly, it's been a pressure my entire life. Since I can remember 9, 10, 11, 12, that responsibility became established as a character narrative. I was always proud of it, but that didn't mean that it didn't come with stress. That's why as I've gotten older, I’ve tried to figure out the business aspect of it all. I don't believe that you have to go through what I went through. I don't believe any of that. Becoming the entertainer that I have, I actually want it to be easier, because it was so lonely. I've already walked that road; I've already laid those bricks. Now I want to create a system, so that we have the map. That's what the conversation now becomes for me.

Speaking of the future, from what you share of your son, I see that he seems very fond of the camera. How would you feel about becoming a nepo mother?

Girl. The job was made for me. I was talking to the lady that was doing my hair and makeup, and I'm like, Girl, we've seen child actors but have we seen child directors? So now I’m on Leo being a baby director, we’ve never seen that. He could be the first child director. That one eats down. If he was 15, directing major motion films? Saying, “I started directing at the age of five. First it was shorts and TikToks and Reels, and by the age of 10, I was directing my first feature starring…”

My own mom.

How good would that be? So I already have his career worked out. I would love for Leo to be into the family business somehow. I look at Estée Lauder and how her company is still being run by her sons, and that's the kind of work I'm trying to do.

Keke Palmer Is Here to Fix Your Life | Solicited Advice | Marie Claire - YouTube

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Photographer Daphne Nguyễn | Stylist Kate Darvill | Hair Stylist Laura Mazikana | Makeup Artist Jasmine Abdallaoui | Creative Direction Montse Tanús | Set Designer Kirsten Bookallil | Entertainment Director Neha Prakash | Production Company B&A Reps Australia | Producer Erin Corbett | DP Ribal Hosn