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Keke Palmer has claimed that one of her white Scream Queens co-stars made a racially insensitive comment to her on set.
The actor, 31, worked on both seasons of Fox’s 2015 slasher comedy alongside actors Emma Roberts, Billie Lourd, Skyler Samuels, and Lea Michele.
In her new memoir, Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative, Palmer shared anecdotes from her career spanning nearly two decades. At one point during the book, she recalled how a white actor on the show – whom she referred to as “Brenda” – once made a racist remark to her on set.
Palmer wrote that “Brenda” was upset over a clash with a colleague, and she tried to calm down her co-star by suggesting that everyone “have fun and respect each other.”
“Keke, literally, just don’t. Who do you think you are? Martin f***ing Luther King?” the co-star replied.
In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, Palmer reflected on the incident and said that she didn’t allow her unnamed co-star’s comments “to be projected on me.”
“It was such a weighted thing that she said, but I didn’t allow that weight to be projected on me, because I know who I am,” the Nope star said. “I’m not no victim. That’s not my storyline, sweetie. I don’t care what her a** said. If I allow what she said to cripple me, then she would.”
Elsewhere in the LA Times interview, Palmer said she clashed with Scream Queens director Ryan Murphy while working on the series.
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In her book, Palmer wrote that she had been given a shooting schedule and arranged to fulfill another business obligation on her day off. But when that day came around, she was informed by production that she was needed on set.
Although she decided to attend her prior obligation, she wrote that the decision resulted in an angry phone call with Murphy, in which he “ripped” into her and told her she was being unprofessional.
“It was kind of like I was in the dean’s office,” Palmer told the publication when asked about the incident. “He was like, ‘I’ve never seen you behave like this. I can’t believe that you, out of all people, would do something like this.’”
The Independent has contacted Murphy’s representative for comment.
The Nickelodeon alum said she had imagined she could possibly become one of the people “you keep seeing in Ryan’s world – Sarah Paulson, Emma Roberts.” Palmer reckoned that possibility went out the window when she pushed back on the scheduling changes.
Palmer said she apologized to Murphy for not being able to film that day, and she thought that would be the end of the disagreement. However, days later, Palmer recalled talking to a co-star in her trailer who said Murphy was still agitated.
“I said, ‘Ryan talked to me and I guess he’s cool, it’s fine.’ And she was like, ‘It’s bad,’ trying to make me scared or something, which was a little irritating,” Palmer said.
“I’m still not sure Ryan cared, or got it, and that’s okay because he was just centering his business, which isn’t a problem to me,” Palmer wrote in the memoir, via LA Times. “But what I do know is even if he didn’t care, and even if I never work with him again, he knows that I, too, see myself as a business.”
