Keke Palmer is opening up about some despicable behavior she experienced on the set of Scream Queens.
The classic 2015 Ryan Murphy show was about a sorority and an on-campus killer in a devil costume? But the real horror was behind the scenes. In addition to Keke, the comedy slasher starred frequent Ryan Murphy collaborator Emma Roberts, Billie Lourd, Abigail Breslin, and Glee alum Lea Michele. And one of them was the killer a racist??
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On Sunday, Keke opened up to the LA Times about her new memoir Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative, in which she reveals never-before-heard stories from her career. One of the more appalling — and racially charged — anecdotes was from behind the scenes on Scream Queens. While reflecting on an argument between two colleagues she tried to diffuse, Keke told the outlet one of her co-stars — whom she wouldn’t identify except to say she was a white woman referred to as “Brenda” — hurled a “weighted” racial remark her way.
She recalled she was just trying to get everyone to calm down from the argument, telling them to “have fun and respect each other.” And that’s when “Brenda” flung the racist remark:
“Keke, literally, just don’t. Who do you think you are? Martin f**king Luther King?”
Jeez… Just because she was trying to help work things out.
It’s pretty layered jab. The implication Keke was trying to rise above her station is bad enough — but by invoking MLK they were making it clear just where they thought she belonged, right? That’s strategic… Especially because Keke was the ONLY Black girl in the show’s production!
The Nope star went on to tell the LA Times:
“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. 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.”
What a powerful way to navigate that! It’s not clear which white, female co-star said it between Emma, Billie, Lea, and Abigail. What we DO know is Lea has a history with being accused of similar behavior on set of Glee. Emma, on the other hand, has been accused in the past of transphobia by her American Horror Story co-star Angelica Ross — who also happens to be Black.
Elsewhere in the interview, Keke also touched on a spat she had with show creator Ryan Murphy after she wasn’t available to shoot additional scenes on one of her days off. She told the outlet he “ripped” into her for being “unprofessional”:
“It was kind of like I was in the dean’s office. 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.’”
However, she believed she worked things out with Ryan… Until she told one of her co-stars about the interaction:
“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.”
We wonder if this was the same person who flung that racist remark at her…
The mother of one went on to say that at the time, she thought she’d be one of the people “you keep seeing in Ryan’s world – [like] Sarah Paulson, Emma Roberts,” but that the confrontation possibly derailed that. She writes in the book:
“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. 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.”
Poor Keke! It sounds like she had to deal with a LOT on that set!
Inneresting that she was comfortable mentioning Emma in a subsequent line after obscuring the offending woman’s name. We can’t help but wonder if she was ruling her out. Which would leave… a pretty big person of interest…
What are your reactions, Perezcious readers? Which co-star was she talking about??
[Images via Baby, This Is Keke Palmer, & Fox/YouTube, & Fox/Hulu]
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