Keke Palmer is opening up about her longtime battle with acne and revealed that once when she was just a teenager, director Tyler Perry offered to send her to the best dermatologist in the field to take care of her “traumatic” skin.
“I remember when I was 14 and Tyler Perry pulled my mom aside at the NAACP awards and literally said, ‘I would pay for her to go to a dermatologist, to the best dermatologist, to help her with her skin,'” Palmer told People TV. “So what I’ve dealt with, with my skin, has been so traumatic and big that people have literally reached into their own pockets to help me.”
“I’m grateful to Tyler Perry to this day. I don’t tell many people that story, but I was so grateful to him for helping me because he had the resources and he was paying it forward,” she later added. “And he was giving me that kind of first introduction to doing that personal care and knowing that I don’t have to live like that. If there’s something I want to improve about myself, there are people that can help me with that.”
This year, Palmer revealed that after years of trying to manage her extreme acne breakouts, she was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).
“I had to go to so many specialists, that a lot of people don’t have the money to even go to one doctor,” she said.
“I just thought it was important to let people know that for years, you could be struggling with something that people don’t have the answer to, and that you have to kind of take the matters into your own hands and doing your own personal research,” she said. “And it wasn’t until I did my own personal research and actually looked into my family bloodline and realized that a lot of people in my family have struggled with insulin resistance, that has led to obesity, that has led to diabetes and that has led to PCOS.”
