Keke Palmer has shared the long-lasting advice she got from Ice Cube as a teenager while on set with the iconic hip-hop innovator.
The former child star was a guest on sports commentator personality Shannon Sharpe’s infamous Club Shay Shay podcast to promote her upcoming second memoir, Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative.
During the interview, she recalled the time when Cube gave her some poignant advice on set of the 2008 Fred Durst-directed film The Longshots which “stuck with her” throughout her career.
“He was very cool, very chill,” she began. “He didn’t say too much: a man of few words, but very nice. One day, they were like, ‘Ice Cube wants to speak to you,’ and I’m like, ‘OK…’ So they call me into a room and he’s way far distant from me and it’s some bodyguards there. And I’m [thinking], ‘What we about to talk about?’”
Palmer continued: “He’s like, ‘I just want to tell you, Keke. You’re a beautiful young lady, and I see how kind you are and how nice you are to everybody on the set. But, I want you to know you’re growing into a young woman, and a lot of times the way that people see you – the way that these men see you on set – it’s not the way you see yourself. So protect yourself, be careful and don’t let them take advantage of you. Know who you are and know what you have, so people can’t use it against you.”
The 31-year-old revealed that she was thankful for the words of wisdom, although she “didn’t understand it because [she] was like 14 at the time.”
“It was so important for him to say to me,” she concluded. “He’s a father; he’s someone who has seen a lot in this industry, especially with young entertainers. I always remember that, and I was always so grateful to him for that. I haven’t seen him since but I would love to tell him that really stuck with me all these years and thank you for reminding me.”
The Longshots was Cube and Palmer’s second film together – their first time on screen together was in the 2004 cult classic Barbershop 2: Back In Business.
Palmer also recalled the advice given to her by rapper Nicki Minaj at this year’s Met Gala while appearing on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
With a thick New York drawl, Palmer imitated the Queens rapper, saying: “Look, I don’t read the press. I don’t know everything that’s going on, but I just want to tell you: nobody knows what it’s like when we turn off the lights and we gotta be with ourselves. So, you do whatever you need to do to be good with you.”
Minaj jokingly said she would hit the entertainment polymath with a “cease and desist” for impersonating her on X/Twitter, saying she was ruining her “bad guy thing”.
