Keke Palmer Shares the Secret to Her Meme-ability
Keke Palmer knows a thing or two about memes—after all, she's responsible for some of the best.
The Alice actress and her co-star Common tried to put into words what makes her such a hilarious source for internet fodder during E! News' Daily Pop on March 16. For Keke, it's simple: "The thing that I think the surprises people or makes me meme-able is that I can kinda sometimes be a bit bold."
Who else could confidently declare "I don't know who this man is" while looking at a photo of Dick Cheney? Several hilarious memes were born out of that Vanity Fair interview, and she's continued to deliver ever since (long live her reaction to Mike Johnson's date proposal).
"I looked very much up to my father growing up," she continued. "He's very much [an] old-school Chicago Black man, and I think a lot of my phrasing and a lot of my language comes from that. I'm very old school and people aren't expecting it."
That, and Keke's "super expressive," Common added. "You can get great memes out of the faces that Keke does. Like, damn, I love that freedom!"
The pair got to know one another while filming Alice, which stars Keke as the title heroine, an enslaved woman who escapes a Georgia plantation and is suddenly transported to the year 1973. Common plays Frank, a truck driver who helps Alice adjust to the time period."
"When I first started reading the script," Common said, "I called my manager like, 'Man, you know I don't want to do a slave movie.'" Common's manager told him to "keep reading," and it didn't take long for him to understand what he meant. He says he was "attracted [to] the twists and turns and that I never knew what was going to happen."
Keke was equally excited to take on the project, which she described as "powerful."
"It's important for us all to look at history as a way to pull back the layers that have been hidden as it pertains to some of these atrocities," Keke told Daily Pop. "Although we went through the intense journey with Alice, in the end of it, I felt not just happy for her or better inside about what she accomplished, but I was also able to take that same spirit with me into my life as a Black woman."
Hear more from Keke and Common in the above E! News interview.
Alice is in theaters March 18.
