Keke Palmer has become a mogul of her own making in the past few years, but in 2015 she was in a transitional phase of moving her career from child star to adult performer. She was cast in Ryan Murphy’s Scream Queens, for which she was well suited; it’s a campy, unserious series that could showcase her considerable comedic talents. From the outside, she seems like a perfect fit for Murphy’s stable of stars, and she even thought she might become one of the actors “you keep seeing in Ryan’s world—Sarah Paulson, Emma Roberts,” as she says in a new Los Angeles Times interview. But an altercation between her and the powerful producer may have ruined her chances.
In her new book Master Of Me: The Secret To Controlling Your Narrative, Palmer writes that she had arranged to do another job during time off from filming Scream Queens but was called to the set of the horror comedy. Palmer decided to fulfill her obligation to the other job, leading to a nasty phone call from Murphy who “ripped” into her: “It was kind of like I was in the dean’s office,” she tells the Times. “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.'”
After Palmer apologized, she thought everything was okay until she had a conversation with a co-worker about it. “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.” She now believes that holding her ground in the situation ended her professional relationship with Murphy. “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,” she writes in her book (via The Times). “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.”
Murphy isn’t the only person from Scream Queens that Palmer exposes in her book. She also writes about an unnamed female co-star (“Brenda”) who was clashing with a different colleague when Palmer tried to diffuse the tension by suggesting “have fun and respect each other.” Brenda responded, “Keke, literally, just don’t. Who do you think you are? Martin F— Luther King?”
Palmer is not the only person to come forward about racist microaggressions (or just aggressions) on Murphy’s sets. Samantha Marie Ware came forward in 2020 with allegations of racism against Lea Michele (also a star in Scream Queens) on the set of Glee. Angelica Ross also spoke about feeling silenced about what she observed were “racist” shirts worn by crew on American Horror Story, additionally accusing Emma Roberts (also a star in Scream Queens) of transphobia. Ross noted in 2023 that “on a Ryan Murphy set, there is sure to be chaos.”
For Palmer’s part, she declined to name her anonymous Scream Queens co-star in the book because she didn’t want to give that person any power. “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,” the Nope star tells the Times. “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.”
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