00:00 My first tattoo, I think it says,
00:02 "Don't cast thy pearls before swine."
00:04 I didn't hold up to it.
00:06 What's up, Teen Vogue?
00:07 It's me, Keke Palmer, and I'm going through my firsts.
00:11 [upbeat music]
00:15 The first thing I do when I wake up is
00:17 go check on Leo, my son.
00:19 If he's not in the bed with me,
00:21 then he's down the hall in his room.
00:23 And so I just go check on him to see, you know,
00:25 if he's ready to get up,
00:27 or sometimes he might be still sleeping.
00:29 That's the first thing I do, first thing I think about.
00:31 The first thing I do to set myself up for a good day is
00:34 just think to myself, "We're gonna have a good day."
00:36 You know what I mean?
00:38 I literally have a good attitude.
00:40 I tell myself, whether I woke up only, you know,
00:43 getting four hours of sleep or eight hours of sleep
00:46 or, you know, whatever it might be,
00:48 I just tell myself, "Hey, you know, it's another day.
00:51 We're gonna go right at it."
00:52 The first time I went viral was for "And the Gag Is."
00:55 It was the "And the Gag Is" era.
00:57 I started doing this sketch, you know, on my Instagram page.
01:00 ♪ But the gag is ♪
01:02 ♪ The gag has him gagging ♪
01:03 ♪ And now he won't stop calling ♪
01:06 I would say something and I would say,
01:07 "Hey, but the gag is," which is like, you know,
01:09 the punchline, the ticket.
01:11 And that was the first time that I kind of went viral.
01:13 The first TV show that made me feel understood,
01:16 I'd have to say, was "Mope to the, Eat to the Moesha."
01:20 Yes, the show is so good.
01:24 I just loved it.
01:25 First of all, Moesha, now that I'm grown,
01:26 she was a brat.
01:27 She was mean as hell to her daddy, Frank.
01:29 Frank never did nothing but try to love her.
01:30 And it was just really messed up that she was really,
01:32 actually, like a very bratty.
01:34 I mean, and what, she grew up either in Limerick Park
01:36 or Lidaire Heights.
01:37 She was low-key black bourgeoisie.
01:39 I mean, I just, I made a lot of realizations,
01:41 but I still loved Moesha.
01:43 And the "Ohaji" episode, oh my gosh.
01:45 The first thing I thought when I launched KTV was,
01:47 "Oh my gosh, what am I doing?
01:49 Am I wasting all this money?"
01:50 Because, honey, it was a full Kiki investment.
01:54 And I was just thinking, you know,
01:55 "Hey, is this the right thing?"
01:57 But the cool thing when you're creating something new
01:59 is that you learn as you go.
02:01 That's what I've done.
02:02 I have not stopped.
02:03 And at every step and every corner,
02:05 I've faced things head on with my team.
02:07 And we've been able to not only accomplish
02:10 what we've wanted in this first year,
02:12 but even more.
02:13 Where we're going with KTV just becomes clearer and clearer.
02:17 And so I do say to anybody out there
02:19 that's starting something,
02:20 you know, you might have a blanket idea.
02:22 You know, you might have to switch gears
02:23 and it'll change as time goes.
02:25 It'll continue to develop.
02:26 But don't think that you have to start
02:28 when everything is 100% because that doesn't really exist.
02:31 It's just you believing in it,
02:33 you having that seed of faith,
02:35 and continuing to build on top of that
02:37 and taking it one day at a time.
02:39 The first time I walked away from something big,
02:41 ooh, it probably was "Half Nelson" with Ryan Gosling
02:46 when I was probably like 12 or 13.
02:48 The movie was about him being a teacher who was on drugs
02:50 and one of his students sold him drugs.
02:52 And my mom was like,
02:53 "You can't go from spelling words to selling drugs
02:55 for Ryan Gosling."
02:56 So that was like what we walked away from.
02:58 The first time I truly felt confident in myself,
03:01 I'll just take it all the way back,
03:02 was when I did my first solo.
03:04 When I was five years old at St. Benedict in Illinois,
03:07 I sang "These Three Kings" from Warriantyre type of song.
03:10 I forget how it goes, but I did the performance
03:13 and I remember feeling really proud of myself
03:15 because the mic was too high for me,
03:17 but I pulled that mic out and I just started singing.
03:22 Oh my gosh, the first time, you know what?
03:24 My best friend always asked me,
03:25 "What were you thinking when you first had Leo?"
03:28 And I always tell her the same thing.
03:31 I just thought, "I love you, son.
03:33 I'm so happy to see you, son."
03:34 Like, I don't know.
03:35 I felt like it was an episode of "Family Matters."
03:37 I just felt really happy,
03:39 but it also felt sweet and intimate, but really joyous.
03:42 You know what I mean?
03:43 Just truly joyous.
03:44 I just remember pushing him out
03:45 and it immediately got on my chest
03:47 and he made that little like,
03:48 "Eh-heh, nyeh, nyeh."
03:49 You know how babies do.
03:50 And I was waiting on it
03:51 'cause I done seen some spooky reels.
03:53 And so I was like, "Let me hear that, let me."
03:55 And he was like, "Nyeh, nyeh."
03:57 I was like, "I love you, son.
03:58 I just love you so much, son."
04:00 My first tattoo, almost forgot about it.
04:04 It's under my boob.
04:06 Damn, I almost feel like it's there
04:08 after the breastfeeding has disappeared.
04:10 I think it says something along the lines of,
04:12 "Don't cast thy pearls before swine."
04:15 I didn't hold up to it.
04:17 The first song I wrote was this song with my mom
04:21 when I was nine years old.
04:23 And it was called,
04:23 ♪ Summer fun, it covers me ♪
04:26 ♪ It makes me feel so at ease ♪
04:29 ♪ Love to know what's best with me ♪
04:32 Wait, put in three words.
04:33 ♪ Everything is lovely, I can't ♪
04:35 First of all, obviously my mom
04:37 was heavy handed on the writing.
04:39 I remember writing it with her.
04:40 She was like, "Y'all wanna write a song?"
04:41 'Cause my mom was always writing songs and recording.
04:43 She had her own recording equipment.
04:45 She would be able to produce herself,
04:46 write her music and record her.
04:49 And we just thought it was so cool.
04:50 And so we would bug her from time to time.
04:52 And she said, "Y'all wanna do a song?"
04:54 And we're like, "Yeah, we wanna do a song."
04:55 And then we did, "Summer fun."
04:57 My first big purchase?
04:59 Whoa, probably a Dell laptop.
05:01 Child, I wanted to play Sims so bad.
05:03 It couldn't work on the PC I had
05:05 because it would like crash.
05:06 Y'all remember Sims?
05:07 Like the game is so much juice
05:09 that it would like crash your system.
05:11 So the only way I could play it
05:12 was if I got a Dell laptop.
05:13 And I remember, oh my gosh, zoom, zoom.
05:16 The first moment that I realized I was famous
05:18 was probably when I went to Universal Studios
05:21 after "True Jackson" VP had aired.
05:22 It was probably like a year
05:23 into the show being on television.
05:25 I remember like within an hour's time,
05:27 I had like 100 people surrounding me in a circle
05:29 wanting to take pictures.
05:30 And I was like, oh my gosh, things have changed.
05:33 It was really, really shocking.
05:35 Like I was just like, this can't even be real
05:37 that these people are doing this and acting this way.
05:40 And that was the first time that I kind of noticed
05:41 that whoa, something's different with my life now.
05:44 The first time that I saw the meme
05:47 of baby, this is Kiki Palmer.
05:49 I was like, yo, that is so funny
05:52 because the way that the girl said it, you know.
05:54 And just to give you some background story,
05:55 there was this like meme of me with these really harsh bangs.
05:59 First of all, I hated that hair.
06:00 I told the lady that I wanted,
06:02 oh, this is my first time getting a weave.
06:03 And she gave me just like the worst closure.
06:06 I hated my hair so, so, so, so bad.
06:08 Anyway, this picture went viral
06:10 and somebody commented underneath it
06:11 and was like, excuse me, please take this down, please.
06:14 Because this is my cousin that was hit by a Metro train.
06:16 And so then a girl was like,
06:18 why did this girl DM me lying like this?
06:21 Because baby, this is Kiki Palmer.
06:23 This is motherfucking Kiki Palmer.
06:26 And after I seen that, I just loved it so, so much.
06:28 And I got to talk to the girl
06:30 and I named my podcast off of that very famous meme.
06:33 The first celebrity impression that I mastered,
06:37 and this is since I was a little kid,
06:39 was Angela Bassett, honey.
06:40 It was always Angela Bassett
06:42 because people always told me,
06:43 especially after I did a Key Linda B,
06:45 people would tell me all the time
06:46 how much I looked like her and everything like that.
06:48 And I loved Michael Jackson's story,
06:49 The American Dream, when I was a kid growing up.
06:51 And so I always would do,
06:53 you a lie, you a cheat, and I don't want you,
06:57 I don't want you, no.
06:58 And everybody would, I mean, literally, all my life,
07:01 especially whenever I did a move with Queen Latifah,
07:03 Queen Latifah would make me do the Tina Turner,
07:05 you ain't got to tell me but once!
07:06 It's okay, it's okay.
07:09 She would literally, after every lunch break
07:12 on Joyful Noise, she would be like,
07:13 Kiki, do Angela, do Angela.
07:15 So for years, she knew about the Angela impression
07:17 before you guys.
07:18 The first person that I contact
07:19 any time anything happens with me is my mom.
07:22 Every single time, I'm always like,
07:24 mom, did you see?
07:25 Or mom, did you hear?
07:26 Girl, you won't believe,
07:27 whether it's tea or work or anything,
07:31 I will always tell my mom first.
07:33 Oh my gosh, I will never forget,
07:35 the first time that I introduced Lady Miss Jaclyn
07:37 was on the set of Scream Queens,
07:39 it was the second season,
07:40 and I was working with my, still to this day,
07:42 producing partner, writing partner, Max Wyeth,
07:45 and I always end up sounding like an old lady sometimes.
07:48 I'm just like, yes, honey, you know?
07:50 And he loved when I would do that,
07:52 and so he said, what do you think about
07:53 doing this hashtag, creating this kind of running sketch
07:56 called Southern Belle Insults?
07:58 And that was the beginning of Lady Miss Jaclyn.
08:00 Even before we named her,
08:01 it was just a Southern Belle giving insults.
08:04 I can really take off my gloves
08:06 and treat you like a sack of potatoes
08:08 and cheap frock that you are.
08:09 And we just kept doing it,
08:11 and slowly we started to develop this world for her,
08:13 and he and I, to this day, are just astonished
08:16 about what we've been able to capture.
08:17 She's like Mama Dia.
08:18 ♪ Kiki, do you love me ♪
08:20 The first thing I wanna say
08:22 to people who come up to me and says,
08:24 Kiki, do you love me?
08:25 Is, you thought you did something, didn't you?
08:28 You thought you was the first, wouldn't you?
08:32 No, no.
08:34 Thank you, Teen Vogue, for joining me on my first.
08:37 [upbeat music]
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