The three performances that shaped Keke Palmer’s career: “I didn’t even realise”
First appearing on our screens when she was only 11 years old, Keke Palmer has steadily climbed the ranks of the film industry.
From her Emmy Award-winning turn in Turnt Up With The Taylors to stealing the show in Jordan Peele’s sci-fi Nope, she’s beloved for her funny and magnetic performances and personality. This year, she’s gained even more critical success for her performance alongside SZA in the comedy One of Them Days and is on track for even more with the upcoming Aziz Ansari series Good Fortune starring Sandra Oh, Seth Rogen and Keanu Reeves.
Not only all of that, but she’s also got an album and has long been a TV personality. Being a multi-hyphenate, she’s undoubtedly a role model for legions of young women, especially young black women who are still so often lacking representation in film and television.
In 2022, before Krystin Ver Lynden’s Alice was released, which was a modern interpretation of the 1970s blaxploitation effort, Palmer discussed some of the roles that inspired her as a young woman. Some of these performances meant so much to the actor during her formative years because of that priceless feeling of being represented on-screen.
First up on Palmer’s list is Angela Bassett’s knockout turn in What’s Love Got to Do with It, the biopic that charts Tina Turner’s journey from childhood to stardom, and her turbulent relationship with Ike Turner. Tina herself wasn’t keen on being shown as a victim in the film, but she always praised Bassett’s performance, saying she never copied her outright, but somehow captured the very soul of who she was.
Bassett already had some impressive projects under her belt before the biopic came to fruition, but this is the one that is almost always cited as her breakthrough. It landed Bassett her first Academy Award nomination and set her on the path of becoming one of the most influential Black actors we’ve ever seen. “[It] was a big one that I didn’t even realise had impacted me as a kid,” Palmer told CinemaBlend.
Her next choice might not be quite as critically acclaimed as Angela Bassett, but it’s definitely one that was a big part of any ‘90s kids’ childhood: That’s So Raven. Just those three words are probably enough to catapult any Disney Channel kid into an oblivion of nostalgia, but even more important than that, Raven Symoné was the first black female star in a Disney series. Palmer, herself a child star, spoke of how inspiring this was for her, “Watching her on television and seeing what she was able to accomplish was really just so inspiring.”
To close things out, Palmer highlighted another standout young Black Disney star: Brandy in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Just a few years on from her self-titled debut album, Brandy took on the lead role in what’s now seen as a groundbreaking retelling of the classic French fairytale.
It may have initially received bad reviews, but it featured an insane cast. Whitney Houston, Whoopi Goldberg, Bernadette Peters and Jason Alexander to name a few. It was also the first time a black actor played the Princess on screen. Of course, it would go on to become a cultural touchstone for many young black girls, including Palmer. In fact, she even went on to play the exact same role in the Broadway adaptation of the film.
For Palmer, the exposure to role models that looked like her and had similar backgrounds to her not only offered representation but also inspired her to follow in their footsteps. And by god, she’s managed to reach the same heights as those that came before her.
