Actress Keke Palmer describes when she first started to notice signs of her anxiety and depression. Plus, she discusses how being a child star affected her emotions and self-image.
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00 So we were backstage at What Happens Live.
00:02 Yes.
00:03 And you know, the show's great.
00:04 We're partying it up.
00:05 Oh my gosh, so funny, yeah.
00:06 But when we went backstage, you started
00:08 talking to me about some deeper stuff happening in your life.
00:10 Some of the anxieties you'd been through.
00:12 You talked about depression a little bit.
00:14 Yeah.
00:14 Where did that all start?
00:16 I think when I first started noticing that I had anxiety
00:19 or that something was--
00:20 I wanted to start searching for ways
00:23 to describe how I was feeling because I couldn't really
00:25 express them.
00:25 I had no labeling for what I felt.
00:28 When I was around probably 15, 14, 15, 16,
00:32 like those ages is when I really started looking up for ways
00:35 to describe what I felt.
00:36 And the words I came across were stress, anxiety,
00:40 and depression.
00:42 So the child acting you were doing,
00:44 which you started around age nine, right?
00:46 Yeah.
00:47 How did that play into this?
00:50 I think the way that the entertainment industry played
00:53 into the way that I felt, aside from just maybe those things
00:58 just being kind of a part of life,
01:00 was the fact that I was not always
01:02 able to feel like I was OK to be myself, having pressure,
01:06 trying to continue to feel this personality or idea
01:10 that people had of me.
01:12 That was really hard for me growing up.
01:16 The word breakdown comes up, the time
01:18 when you sort of hit the bottom.
01:21 I think when I was 17, that was the first time
01:23 I had told my parents I really want to go to a therapist.
01:26 I'd done some research.
01:28 And again, coming from where I come from,
01:30 these aren't things that people are openly talking about.
01:32 I come from Robbins, Illinois, which is a very small town.
01:35 I just got a gas station a couple of years ago.
01:38 You know what I mean?
01:39 It's a very, very small town.
01:40 And so when you're depressed, you're lazy.
01:44 When you're angry, it's not because you've
01:47 experienced trauma and you don't know how to express yourself.
01:50 It's just you're a bad person.
01:51 So I never had a way to describe these things.
01:54 And so once I finally realized what was going on, I said,
01:57 OK, I just need to talk to somebody.
01:58 But what happened that made you feel like you're out of sorts?
02:01 Was there a moment you realized, I got to turn this around.
02:03 It's not going the right way.
02:04 Yes, probably.
02:06 I think it was just a point I'd hit with my parents
02:09 and realizing that there was no way I could really communicate
02:11 with them any longer what I was experiencing.
02:14 And I needed to get outside of that,
02:17 outside of my family structure, to really understand
02:20 the problems that I was going through.
02:21 One of the beautiful things about you--
02:23 and I've learned a lot about you over the last few weeks.
02:26 And this is her book by the way.
02:26 It's called I Don't Belong to You.
02:28 And when I read this, I actually got fairly emotional
02:31 thinking about how mature you'd become.
02:35 And you're very-- how old are you now?
02:36 I'm 23.
02:36 That's right, 23.
02:38 It's not written the way a 23-year-old, I would think,
02:40 would write a book.
02:41 Now, parts of it are.
02:41 Obviously, you've got emojis and all kinds of hashtags
02:44 and the gag is and--
02:45 Yes!
02:46 --the bae.
02:47 I'm getting all these words now.
02:48 It's like, I've got a whole glossary of things
02:50 I got in the back of the book here to keep up with you.
02:52 I love it.
02:53 The profound insights about the struggles
02:55 that you were experiencing are there
02:57 because you struggled with them.
02:59 And I'm just going to quote a little thing here.
03:01 It says, "I did not spread my wings
03:03 because I was told I couldn't fly a certain way,
03:07 and I believed it."
03:08 Yeah.
03:09 Now, how did that affect you?
03:11 Oh, that is the story I feel of life.
03:13 It makes me emotional a little bit
03:15 because that is what we all go through.
03:20 When I came into the industry so young,
03:22 especially specifically in that I was talking about the music
03:25 industry, I came in so young, singing in church,
03:28 and I really allowed the industry
03:30 to make me feel, because my mom and me wouldn't let them
03:34 exploit me, that I couldn't be a musician,
03:36 that it was not for me.
03:37 I really allowed them to steal my joy and love for something
03:41 right from under me.
03:42 And that was the biggest heartbreak of my life,
03:45 was turning my back on music because of what
03:49 people said to me.
03:51 It was very hard for me.
03:54 What were they saying to you that made
03:56 you think you couldn't do it?
03:58 It was just the overall voices that I kept
04:00 hearing from different people.
04:02 And they would say, your career is just mainly with acting,
04:06 or this is not what your fans really want,
04:09 and you can't really do R&B music.
04:11 But it was about telling my story for me.
04:13 Music was about telling my story.
04:15 It was not about making billions of dollars.
04:16 It was about being able to say, yo, this is where I came from,
04:19 and this is where I'm going.
04:21 And this is the sound I grew up with.
04:23 I come from Chicago, and R&B, jazz, that's my thing.
04:27 [APPLAUSE]
04:30 There was a part of the book where
04:32 you talk about this fight you were having
04:34 with the record industry.
04:36 Yeah.
04:36 You said, it's not about selling singles.
04:40 It's about people understanding who I am.
04:42 Right.
04:43 Why is that message so hard to deliver?
04:47 Because I think people like to put out
04:49 facade in the entertainment industry of perfection,
04:52 of glossiness.
04:54 And that's just not who Keke Palmer is.
04:56 You know, I came from the hood.
04:59 And that's the beautiful thing.
05:00 And I don't want to hide that from other little girls
05:03 that are from the hood.
05:03 I want them to see me up here with you
05:05 and say that they can do it.
05:07 [APPLAUSE]
05:08 Thank you for watching.
05:09 Don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications
05:11 so you never miss out on new videos to live the good life.