Keke Palmer is revisiting a negative experience she had with Ryan Murphy while working on one of his shows.
According to Variety, Palmer, who is currently promoting her upcoming memoir Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative, told the Los Angeles Times in a recent interview about the moment Murphy “ripped” into her over the phone.
The story, which is also in Palmer’s memoir, took place when Palmer was starring in Murphy’s 2015-2016 drama Scream Queens. She wrote how she was given her shooting schedule and had also arranged to do another business obligation on her off day.
What Keke Palmer said in the interview and in her book about Ryan Murphy
“But when that day rolled around, production told her that she was actually needed on set,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “She decided to keep her prior obligation, which resulted in an angry phone call with Murphy in which he ‘ripped’ into her and told her she was unprofessional.”
Palmer said in her interview, “It was kind of like I was in the dean’s office. 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.”
She apologized and assumed that was it for this ordeal. But she later learned from another co-star that Murphy was still not over what Palmer did.
“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 also believes that moment with Murphy got her shut out of Murphy’s later projects. The Los Angeles Times wrote, “Prior to the incident, Palmer felt she might go on to be one of those people ‘you keep seeing in Ryan’s world — Sarah Paulson, Emma Roberts.’ But in standing up for herself, Palmer says, she believes she ended that possibility.”
However, she wrote in her book that she feels like the incident allowed Murphy to also realize that Palmer also took her own time seriously as well.
“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 wrote. “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.”
The ‘Scream Queens’ actress who made a racist remark
Palmer also has another Scream Queens story in the book– she says a white actress, whom she does not reveal the identity of only refers to as “Brenda,” made a racist remark to her while they were shooting the show. Palmer says the actress was upset after an issue with another colleague. When Palmer suggest that they “have fun and respect each other,” she said that the actress told her, “Keke, literally, just don’t. Who do you think you are? Martin F*****g Luther King?”
“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,” Palmer writes in the book. “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.”
As for the incident with Murphy, this isn’t the first time Murphy has been accused of blowing off actors from his projects. Decider added that Angelica Ross, who starred in Pose and American Horror Story: 1984, also accused Murphy of leaving her “on read” after she sent him ideas for an all-Black season of American Horror Story. Interestingly enough, before Murphy allegedly ghosted Ross, he appeared on board with her idea and even proposed adding Palmer to the hypothetical project.