Featured Image Credit: SOPA Images Limited/Alamy Live News. John Palmer/Media Punch/Alamy Live News
Topics: Film and TV, News, Racism, Jordan Peele, Celebrity
Charisa Bossinakis
Topics: Film and TV, News, Racism, Jordan Peele, Celebrity
Keke Palmer has shut down ‘colourism’ comparisons to Zendaya and said she is creating her own career path.
The actor stars in Jordan Peele's new film, Nope, and fans believe this is finally her 'star is born' moment.
However, some people on social media questioned why it's taken so long for Palmer to reach this height when someone like Zendaya seemingly got there earlier.
Bizarrely, users suggested it was due to 'colourism'.
But the 28-year-old has taken to Twitter and slammed those comparing her to the Euphoria actor simply because they are both successful Black women in Hollywood.
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She wrote: “A great example of colorism is to believe I can be compared to anyone. I’m the youngest talk show host ever.
“The first Black woman to star in her own show on Nickelodeon, & the youngest & first Black Cinderella on broadway. I’m an incomparable talent. Baby, THIS, is Keke Palmer.”
While the comparison boils down to a lack of representation in the media, Palmer comes with one of the most impressive resumes a young actor has ever seen.
She continued: “I’ve been a leading lady since I was 11 years old. I have over 100+ credits, and currently starring in an original screenplay that’s the number one film at the box office #NOPE.
“I’ve had a blessed career thus far, I couldn’t ask for more but God continues to surprise me.”
Palmer's latest film is Jordan Peele’s Nope, which centres around two siblings who own a Californian horse ranch who discover something sinister looming in the sky and attempt to capture it on video.
Vulture says the film ‘delves into the scams of representation' and 'the dangers of Hollywood’s glimmer’.
While appearing on the TODAY show to promote the project, the director said that notion of race bleeds into many aspects of his filmmaking.
"I think it's impossible to make any movie without it being about race, because race is all around us," Peele said.
"You can't have Black people in a flying saucer film and just have it be the same experience. It's not. There's a different relationship."
Peele added that part of exploring race through the artistic lens is subverting the audience’s expectations, spawned out of limiting Hollywood tropes.
“My race, I think, has informed my entire artistic journey, and part of it has been trying to reconcile the box, and the box is that this country puts people of colour in and trying to break out of that box,” he said.