For Keke Palmer, her teenage years were the darkest period of her life.
The multi-hyphenate star revealed the shocking detail during a chat with Whoopi Goldberg at the Tribeca Festival's Storytellers series where the two discussed a wide range of topics.
"I remember it was just nobody could relate to me, and the thing about my family is my family has always been so awesome," she said. "But there was a period where we were all being traumatised by fame, and they had a more relatable experience to the trauma of the fame than I did, right?... because I was the star. They were the people in the star shadow."
Palmer shared that it was easier for her family to understand each other than to understand her.
"I just was so sad, you guys. I really was so sad, you know," she said. "I was so sad that I wished I could feel the pain of it because it was not physical. It was so deep in my soul and in my heart that I felt numb or something like that because it was like no way to get it out of me, you know what I mean?"
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Palmer started her acting career as a child star when she played the role of Queen Latifah's niece in “Barbershop 2: Back in Business”.
She rose to fame with breakout roles in the 2006 film “Akeelah” and the sitcom “True Jackson, VP,” that ran from 2008 to 2011.
Recalling a moment from her earlier years in the public eye, Palmer said she was once in her room, "crawled" into a corner, and "literally visualised" herself.
"I just decided that nobody really wants to get to know me and the more that I try to get people to know the real me, the more that they just talk to this character, the more that they just want me to be happy and smiling," she said.
"If I show any complexity of my emotions, or I show that I'm a kid, I show that I'm sad, I show that I'm down, I show that I'm tired, that I'm exhausted from these things, they just get mad at me, and I don't want my family to lose everything," Palmer added.
"That was the day that Keke Palmer was truly born," as she promised to "protect" her inner self.
"And inside I just knew like that sensitive character, that person that gets tired, that gets, you know, down, that feels low, that nobody wants to hear it, so you keep it to yourself. It was kind of like you don't deserve type of vibe; you know what I mean? Because I felt that was the only way to protect myself. That was the lowest, and it went so far that I forgot that I did it. I forgot that I locked that key up," Palmer said.
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