Keke Palmer reflects on a challenging time she had while filming Ryan Murphy’s Scream Queens.
In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, she talked about her new memoir, Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative, where she shares stories from her career. In the book, Palmer discusses her two seasons on the Fox series Scream Queens, where she worked with Emma Roberts, Billie Lourd, Skyler Samuels, and Lea Michele. She specifically remembers an incident when Murphy reportedly called her “unprofessional” and a former co-star made a racist comment to her.
Palmer recounts how she reviewed her shooting schedule and planned to take care of another commitment on her day off. When production told her she was needed on set, she decided that wasn’t going to show up which led to a tense phone call from Murphy where he called her unprofessional. “It was kind of like I was in the dean’s office,” Palmer said. “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.’”
Palmer apologized, and it seemed to her that everything was fine, but a co-star told her that wasn’t the case. “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.
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Palmer mentioned that the incident might have stopped her from becoming a regular collaborator with Murphy, unlike Sarah Paulson and Emma Roberts, who have worked on several of his projects.
“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,” she writes in the book. “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.”
While working on the show, Palmer writes that a white actress, whom she calls “Brenda,” allegedly made a racist comment to her on set. “Keke, literally, just don’t. Who do you think you are? Martin f—— Luther King?,” Palmer writes that the person said to her.
“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,” Palmer said. “I’m not no victim. That’s not my storyline, sweetie. I don’t care what her ass said. If I allow what she said to cripple me, then she would.”
