Keke Palmer opened up about how early fame affected her and her family during a conversation with Whoopi Goldberg at the Tribeca Festival. Palmer said that while she was becoming a star in projects like Akeelah and the Bee and True Jackson, VP, her family was dealing with the pressures that came with her rising profile.
She said they were all “being traumatized by fame,” but in different ways — with her parents and siblings adjusting to life in her shadow while she tried to stay grounded.
“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,” Palmer remembered. “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 as I’ve always been.”
Palmer, who grew up in Illinois before her family moved to Los Angeles to support her career, is one of four children raised by Sharon and Lawrence “Larry” Palmer.