Keke Palmer Says She Was ‘Traumatized’ by a Former Manager Who Said Her Mom Would ‘Die’ If She Didn’t Lose Weight

Keke Palmer had an interaction with her manager that left her scarred.

In a recent interview with The Cut, the Emmy winner, 31, revealed that a former manager once criticized her mother’s health.

Palmer, who was 12 at the time, recalled them saying her mother would die if she didn’t lose weight.

“That really, really traumatized me and stressed me out,” she said. “It got me thinking she was going to die, thinking about things like medical bills. It was just too much.”

It was just one of many difficult experiences Palmer, who stars in the upcoming movie One of Them Days, had as a child actor.

She also recalled feeling the pressure to land new acting roles because she was supporting her family financially. 

“I hated my parents for a long time,” she told the outlet. “There was so much pressure to rise to the occasion for my community, for my parents, for my siblings, for their sacrifices. They weren’t saying it, but that was the reality.”

The actress was 10 years old when she made her on-screen debut in the 2004 movie Barbershop 2: Back in Business. That year, she went on to star in episodes of the television shows Cold Case and Strong Medicine, as well as the television film The Wool Cap – which nabbed her a Screen Actors Guild nomination for outstanding performance by a female actor. 

Palmer went on to become a television regular in the aughts, starring in the Disney Channel original movie Jump In! and headlining the Nickelodeon sitcom True Jackson, VP.

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Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE in an October 2024 interview ahead of the release of her memoir Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative, she recalled being in an inappropriate relationship while filming the Nickelodeon series. 

“I was 15, he was 20,” Palmer said of the unidentified individual. “I was trying to balance between being really young, but also feeling quite mature. If I thought it was inappropriate, then I wouldn’t have done it.”

“Obviously I shouldn’t have been 15 dating no 20-year-old,” she added, “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 damn way for me to understand at damn 15.”