Teen Vogue's February cover star Keke Palmer reveals her "first" everything! From the first time she went viral to the first time she time she launched KeyTV, Keke spills all her first times. When was the first time she truly felt confident in herself? How did she feel the first time she held her son? What was the first celebrity impression she mastered?
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00:00 My first tattoo, I think it says,
00:02 "Don't cast thy pearls before swine."
00:04 I didn't hold up to it.
00:06 What's up, Teen Vogue?
00:07 It's me, Keke Palmer, and I'm going through my firsts.
00:11 [upbeat music]
00:15 The first thing I do when I wake up is
00:17 go check on Leo, my son.
00:19 If he's not in the bed with me,
00:21 then he's down the hall in his room.
00:23 And so I just go check on him to see, you know,
00:25 if he's ready to get up,
00:27 or sometimes he might be still sleeping.
00:29 That's the first thing I do, first thing I think about.
00:31 The first thing I do to set myself up for a good day is
00:34 just think to myself, "We're gonna have a good day."
00:36 You know what I mean?
00:38 I literally have a good attitude.
00:40 I tell myself, whether I woke up only, you know,
00:43 getting four hours of sleep or eight hours of sleep
00:46 or, you know, whatever it might be,
00:48 I just tell myself, "Hey, you know, it's another day.
00:51 We're gonna go right at it."
00:52 The first time I went viral was for "And the Gag Is."
00:55 It was the "And the Gag Is" era.
00:57 I started doing this sketch, you know, on my Instagram page.
01:00 ♪ But the gag is ♪
01:02 ♪ The gag has him gagging ♪
01:03 ♪ And now he won't stop calling ♪
01:06 I would say something and I would say,
01:07 "Hey, but the gag is," which is like, you know,
01:09 the punchline, the ticket.
01:11 And that was the first time that I kind of went viral.
01:13 The first TV show that made me feel understood,
01:16 I'd have to say, was "Mope to the, Eat to the Moesha."
01:20 Yes, the show is so good.
01:24 I just loved it.
01:25 First of all, Moesha, now that I'm grown,
01:26 she was a brat.
01:27 She was mean as hell to her daddy, Frank.
01:29 Frank never did nothing but try to love her.
01:30 And it was just really messed up that she was really,
01:32 actually, like a very bratty.
01:34 I mean, and what, she grew up either in Limerick Park
01:36 or Lidaire Heights.
01:37 She was low-key black bourgeoisie.
01:39 I mean, I just, I made a lot of realizations,
01:41 but I still loved Moesha.
01:43 And the "Ohaji" episode, oh my gosh.
01:45 The first thing I thought when I launched KTV was,
01:47 "Oh my gosh, what am I doing?
01:49 Am I wasting all this money?"
01:50 Because, honey, it was a full Kiki investment.
01:54 And I was just thinking, you know,
01:55 "Hey, is this the right thing?"
01:57 But the cool thing when you're creating something new
01:59 is that you learn as you go.
02:01 That's what I've done.
02:02 I have not stopped.
02:03 And at every step and every corner,
02:05 I've faced things head on with my team.
02:07 And we've been able to not only accomplish
02:10 what we've wanted in this first year,
02:12 but even more.
02:13 Where we're going with KTV just becomes clearer and clearer.
02:17 And so I do say to anybody out there
02:19 that's starting something,
02:20 you know, you might have a blanket idea.
02:22 You know, you might have to switch gears
02:23 and it'll change as time goes.
02:25 It'll continue to develop.
02:26 But don't think that you have to start
02:28 when everything is 100% because that doesn't really exist.
02:31 It's just you believing in it,
02:33 you having that seed of faith,
02:35 and continuing to build on top of that
02:37 and taking it one day at a time.
02:39 The first time I walked away from something big,
02:41 ooh, it probably was "Half Nelson" with Ryan Gosling
02:46 when I was probably like 12 or 13.
02:48 The movie was about him being a teacher who was on drugs
02:50 and one of his students sold him drugs.
02:52 And my mom was like,
02:53 "You can't go from spelling words to selling drugs
02:55 for Ryan Gosling."
02:56 So that was like what we walked away from.
02:58 The first time I truly felt confident in myself,
03:01 I'll just take it all the way back,
03:02 was when I did my first solo.
03:04 When I was five years old at St. Benedict in Illinois,
03:07 I sang "These Three Kings" from Warriantyre type of song.
03:10 I forget how it goes, but I did the performance
03:13 and I remember feeling really proud of myself
03:15 because the mic was too high for me,
03:17 but I pulled that mic out and I just started singing.
03:22 Oh my gosh, the first time, you know what?
03:24 My best friend always asked me,
03:25 "What were you thinking when you first had Leo?"
03:28 And I always tell her the same thing.
03:31 I just thought, "I love you, son.
03:33 I'm so happy to see you, son."
03:34 Like, I don't know.
03:35 I felt like it was an episode of "Family Matters."
03:37 I just felt really happy,
03:39 but it also felt sweet and intimate, but really joyous.
03:42 You know what I mean?
03:43 Just truly joyous.
03:44 I just remember pushing him out
03:45 and it immediately got on my chest
03:47 and he made that little like,
03:48 "Eh-heh, nyeh, nyeh."
03:49 You know how babies do.
03:50 And I was waiting on it
03:51 'cause I done seen some spooky reels.
03:53 And so I was like, "Let me hear that, let me."
03:55 And he was like, "Nyeh, nyeh."
03:57 I was like, "I love you, son.
03:58 I just love you so much, son."
04:00 My first tattoo, almost forgot about it.
04:04 It's under my boob.
04:06 Damn, I almost feel like it's there
04:08 after the breastfeeding has disappeared.
04:10 I think it says something along the lines of,
04:12 "Don't cast thy pearls before swine."
04:15 I didn't hold up to it.
04:17 The first song I wrote was this song with my mom
04:21 when I was nine years old.
04:23 And it was called,
04:23 ♪ Summer fun, it covers me ♪
04:26 ♪ It makes me feel so at ease ♪
04:29 ♪ Love to know what's best with me ♪
04:32 Wait, put in three words.
04:33 ♪ Everything is lovely, I can't ♪
04:35 First of all, obviously my mom
04:37 was heavy handed on the writing.
04:39 I remember writing it with her.
04:40 She was like, "Y'all wanna write a song?"
04:41 'Cause my mom was always writing songs and recording.
04:43 She had her own recording equipment.
04:45 She would be able to produce herself,
04:46 write her music and record her.
04:49 And we just thought it was so cool.
04:50 And so we would bug her from time to time.
04:52 And she said, "Y'all wanna do a song?"
04:54 And we're like, "Yeah, we wanna do a song."
04:55 And then we did, "Summer fun."
04:57 My first big purchase?
04:59 Whoa, probably a Dell laptop.
05:01 Child, I wanted to play Sims so bad.
05:03 It couldn't work on the PC I had
05:05 because it would like crash.
05:06 Y'all remember Sims?
05:07 Like the game is so much juice
05:09 that it would like crash your system.
05:11 So the only way I could play it
05:12 was if I got a Dell laptop.
05:13 And I remember, oh my gosh, zoom, zoom.
05:16 The first moment that I realized I was famous
05:18 was probably when I went to Universal Studios
05:21 after "True Jackson" VP had aired.
05:22 It was probably like a year
05:23 into the show being on television.
05:25 I remember like within an hour's time,
05:27 I had like 100 people surrounding me in a circle
05:29 wanting to take pictures.
05:30 And I was like, oh my gosh, things have changed.
05:33 It was really, really shocking.
05:35 Like I was just like, this can't even be real
05:37 that these people are doing this and acting this way.
05:40 And that was the first time that I kind of noticed
05:41 that whoa, something's different with my life now.
05:44 The first time that I saw the meme
05:47 of baby, this is Kiki Palmer.
05:49 I was like, yo, that is so funny
05:52 because the way that the girl said it, you know.
05:54 And just to give you some background story,
05:55 there was this like meme of me with these really harsh bangs.
05:59 First of all, I hated that hair.
06:00 I told the lady that I wanted,
06:02 oh, this is my first time getting a weave.
06:03 And she gave me just like the worst closure.
06:06 I hated my hair so, so, so, so bad.
06:08 Anyway, this picture went viral
06:10 and somebody commented underneath it
06:11 and was like, excuse me, please take this down, please.
06:14 Because this is my cousin that was hit by a Metro train.
06:16 And so then a girl was like,
06:18 why did this girl DM me lying like this?
06:21 Because baby, this is Kiki Palmer.
06:23 This is motherfucking Kiki Palmer.
06:26 And after I seen that, I just loved it so, so much.
06:28 And I got to talk to the girl
06:30 and I named my podcast off of that very famous meme.
06:33 The first celebrity impression that I mastered,
06:37 and this is since I was a little kid,
06:39 was Angela Bassett, honey.
06:40 It was always Angela Bassett
06:42 because people always told me,
06:43 especially after I did a Key Linda B,
06:45 people would tell me all the time
06:46 how much I looked like her and everything like that.
06:48 And I loved Michael Jackson's story,
06:49 The American Dream, when I was a kid growing up.
06:51 And so I always would do,
06:53 you a lie, you a cheat, and I don't want you,
06:57 I don't want you, no.
06:58 And everybody would, I mean, literally, all my life,
07:01 especially whenever I did a move with Queen Latifah,
07:03 Queen Latifah would make me do the Tina Turner,
07:05 you ain't got to tell me but once!
07:06 It's okay, it's okay.
07:09 She would literally, after every lunch break
07:12 on Joyful Noise, she would be like,
07:13 Kiki, do Angela, do Angela.
07:15 So for years, she knew about the Angela impression
07:17 before you guys.
07:18 The first person that I contact
07:19 any time anything happens with me is my mom.
07:22 Every single time, I'm always like,
07:24 mom, did you see?
07:25 Or mom, did you hear?
07:26 Girl, you won't believe,
07:27 whether it's tea or work or anything,
07:31 I will always tell my mom first.
07:33 Oh my gosh, I will never forget,
07:35 the first time that I introduced Lady Miss Jaclyn
07:37 was on the set of Scream Queens,
07:39 it was the second season,
07:40 and I was working with my, still to this day,
07:42 producing partner, writing partner, Max Wyeth,
07:45 and I always end up sounding like an old lady sometimes.
07:48 I'm just like, yes, honey, you know?
07:50 And he loved when I would do that,
07:52 and so he said, what do you think about
07:53 doing this hashtag, creating this kind of running sketch
07:56 called Southern Belle Insults?
07:58 And that was the beginning of Lady Miss Jaclyn.
08:00 Even before we named her,
08:01 it was just a Southern Belle giving insults.
08:04 I can really take off my gloves
08:06 and treat you like a sack of potatoes
08:08 and cheap frock that you are.
08:09 And we just kept doing it,
08:11 and slowly we started to develop this world for her,
08:13 and he and I, to this day, are just astonished
08:16 about what we've been able to capture.
08:17 She's like Mama Dia.
08:18 ♪ Kiki, do you love me ♪
08:20 The first thing I wanna say
08:22 to people who come up to me and says,
08:24 Kiki, do you love me?
08:25 Is, you thought you did something, didn't you?
08:28 You thought you was the first, wouldn't you?
08:32 No, no.
08:34 Thank you, Teen Vogue, for joining me on my first.
08:37 [upbeat music]