Keke Palmer is SELF’s December Cover Star!

Pin

 Actress, singer, and CEO Keke Palmer is known as one of the most employed and employable women in Hollywood. Ever since she stepped into the spotlight at age 11, she has managed herself as an artist and a business, all while remaining true to her authenticity. In her cover story with SELF, the two-time author opens up about the challenges she’s dealt with throughout her life, alongside the community and perspective that’s helped her through it all. 

Pin

Pin

On overcoming crippling anxiety after having her first child: “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.”

On struggling with fame as a young person: “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… I never really told anybody. I was just writing it in my journal.”

On handling isolation as a celebrity: “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.”

On learning more about her family history: “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!’”

On gaining power through controlling her 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.”

Writer: Rachel Wilkerson Miller
Photographer: Jason Kim
Wardrobe Stylist: Dione Davis
Makeup: Kenya Alexis
Hair Stylist: Rico Roberts
Manicurist: Aja Walton
Set Designer: Jacob Burstein

[Photo Credit: Jason Kim /Self Magazine]

• Editorials
• Jason Kim
• Keke Palmer
• Magazines
• Self