Keke Palmer has candidly discussed a significant relationship from her youth, revealing that she began dating a 20-year-old man when she was just 15.
The actress and singer opened up about the experience, acknowledging the complexities and the influence it had on her worldview.
In a recent interview with PEOPLE, the 31-year-old actress revealed that she had a romance with a 20-year-old while starring as a teen fashion executive in the Nickelodeon sitcom True Jackson, VP.
“I had a great time doing True Jackson VP, but it was also a very stressful, difficult, and depressive time,” Palmer said, adding that she was in an “inappropriate” relationship with an older man at the time.
Keke recalled, “I was really young, and I was trying to balance between being really young and also feeling quite mature.” The star explained that at the time, she felt she was wise beyond her years, trying to manage the complexity of her emotions, her career, and her identity as a teenager navigating adult dynamics. This early romance, she shared, led her to “emotionally deal with a lot.”
“I think it grew me a lot,” Keke admitted, looking back on how her understanding of relationships was shaped by her experience. Adding, “If I thought it wasn’t appropriate, then I wouldn’t have done it,”
“Obviously, I shouldn’t have been 15 dating no 20-year-old,” she continued. “But in my mind, it was like, ‘I got a full-time job… Can’t nobody understand me but a grown man.’ But he knew there was a lot of stuff that there’s no d* way for me to understand at d* 15.”
“The power dynamic put me in a place that harmed me in ways I couldn’t have known,” wrote Keke in her upcoming book, “Master in Me.”
She continued, “I didn’t have the language or the strength to accept that who he met was a child, not the woman I wanted to become.”
While it hasn’t changed how she feels about her Nickelodeon show, it has made looking back a little more complicated. “I had a great time doing True Jackson VP,” she told me, “but it was also a very stressful, difficult, depressive time.”
