00:00Well, first of all, my son's mean as hell. He's not nice."
00:03Kiki Palmer is facing backlash over her parenting style with her three-year-old son,
00:07with some claiming she's a bad parent. The former Nickelodeon and Disney star
00:10previously sat down with Rolling Stone to talk about motherhood,
00:13and although she started off praising her son, Leotis.
00:16Literally, my son has changed my life. He's the everything to me in my world.
00:20The part that had fans concerned was when Kiki revealed how her son talks to her,
00:23admitting that he's mean. She went on to share that he was brutally honest with her one day
00:27when she came home from Pilates. Kiki then revealed that he followed her into the bathroom
00:38afterwards while she was showering and kept peeking in, then continued to complain about
00:42her stinking after her shower. Fans took to X to complain about her parenting style and
00:50supposed lack of discipline. This is bad parenting. Boy moms be like,
00:53my son does some weird s**t, but I'm just gonna laugh. She gotta nip that in the bud ASAP
00:58and see how there was no correcting this behavior, while others defended Kiki and her son, saying,
01:03the child is three, I'm reading the comments slash quotes and confirming y'all are insane.
01:07Kiki added that she doesn't want to physically discipline her son,
01:10but shared that she's struggling with gentle parenting.
01:13Who am I raising?
01:14This isn't the first time Kiki's gone viral, but last time, it was over her addressing an age gap kiss.
01:19It was actually a big thing for all of us, because I was 12 and Corbin was 17.
01:22Kiki Palmer has detailed her first on-screen kiss, revealing an uncomfortable age gap between
01:27her and co-star Corbin Bleu. In the hit 2007 Disney film Jump In, Kiki played the character
01:33Mary Thomas, who sparks a romance with Corbin Bleu's character Izzy Daniels. In the film,
01:38the two characters are similar in age, but in reality, Kiki was only 12 years old and Corbin
01:42was 17. Since, Kiki has opened up about filming the kiss scene in the movie, revealing how she
01:47truly felt at the time.
01:49And so I remember I had a call with my agent, and I was like, you know, I'm scared about
01:53this. This is weird.
01:54She recalled the conversation with her agent, who compared the scene to other age gap acting
01:58in the past, making it seem more normalized, but ultimately confusing young Kiki further.
02:03She was like, well, you know, making good I had to kiss Samuel L. Jackson in Eve's Bayou.
02:08So, and I was just like, huh? Why would that make what I'm supposed to do with that?
02:14She also clarified the status of their relationship at the time, revealing their sibling-like bond.
02:19It was actually a big thing for all of us, because I was 12 and Corbin was 17. That was
02:22very, you know, weird. And he was such a brother vibe to me, even though Corbin's adorable,
02:27it's so cute, we all love the hair. It was like, that wasn't the relationship we had.
02:32Kiki continues to address how being a child actor in these environments can be difficult,
02:36especially now she looks back as an adult.
02:38I think there's a weird thing that happens with kid entertainers where we have to literally
02:42dissociate so much, as an adult would in the workplace, in ways that's not normal or common.
02:49Age gap pairings in on-screen relationships continue to raise eyebrows, with actors
02:53increasingly speaking out about them. Zendaya has responded to age gap backlash. The actress
02:58appeared in the film Malcolm and Marie when she was 24 years old. She played
03:02actor John David Washington's love interest, who was 36 at the time.
03:05Can I kiss you? No.
03:08In the film, the two actors get intimate, and we see their relationship eventually crumble.
03:13I feel like once you know someone is there for you, and once you know they love you,
03:16you never actually think of them again. Given the 12-year age gap, many users branded
03:20the casting as inappropriate. One user wrote,
03:23"...the practice of casting younger actresses with men that are older than them is a symptom
03:27of a bigger problem in Hollywood." Another defended the casting, though, saying,
03:30"...y'all praise Margot Robbie being 22 in The Wolf of Wall Street,
03:34but now say s*** like Zendaya is too young for Malcolm and Marie?"
03:37Zendaya then responded to the backlash, saying in an interview,
03:41"...I've played a 16-year-old since I was 16. It's like watching, I guess,
03:45your younger sibling. Now they're grown, and you're not ready for it."
03:48She went on to say,
03:49"...it's hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea that I am grown in real life."
03:54I'm so grateful for John Day because he's such a talent, and I couldn't have been able to go to
04:00those places without that partnership.
04:02Sure.
04:02John was also then asked about the age gap backlash, to which he said,
04:06"...I wasn't concerned about it because she is a woman. People are going to see in this film
04:09how much of a woman she is. They're going to see how mature she is in this role."
04:13"...I don't know."
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