Keke Palmer recalled a tense experience working with Ryan Murphy while working on Scream Queens.
The 31-year-old actress spoke about the matter in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times while discussing her upcoming memoir, Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative.
In the book, Palmer recalled a moment when she scheduled a day off for another work obligation, only to find out last-minute that she was needed on the set of Murphy’s short-lived 2015 comedy horror series.
When she decided to keep her prior commitment, she reportedly received an angry phone call from Murphy who then “ripped” into her, telling her she was being unprofessional.
“It was kind of like I was in the dean’s office,” Palmer told the Times’ Amy Kaufman about the interaction. “He was like, ‘I’ve never seen you behave like this. I can’t believe that you, out of all people, would do something like this.’”
Although Palmer apologized and thought they had patched things up, she later heard from a co-star that the situation was “bad,” leaving her feeling that standing up for herself might have closed doors in Murphy’s world.
“I’m still not sure Ryan cared, or got it, and that’s okay because he was just centering his business, which isn’t a problem to me,” reads an excerpt from Palmer’s book, per the Times. “But what I do know is even if he didn’t care, and even if I never work with him again, he knows that I, too, see myself as a business."
Elsewhere in the book, Palmer recalled an unnamed white actor she nicknamed “Brenda” who made a racist comment to her on set after trying to calm her down over a clash with a colleague.
“Keke, literally, just don’t. Who do you think you are? Martin F— Luther King?” Brenda allegedly said.
“It was such a weighted thing that she said, but I didn’t allow that weight to be projected on me, because I know who I am,” Palmer said about the incident. “I’m not no victim. That’s not my storyline, sweetie. I don’t care what her ass said. If I allow what she said to cripple me, then she would.”
Palmer played Zayday on the Fox series opposite Emma Roberts, Ariana Grande, Lea Michele, Abigail Breslin, and Billie Lourd. The show ran for two seasons before being canceled in 2016.
Murphy expressed interest in rebooting the show in a 2019 interview with Deadline, saying, “Obviously I work for Netflix now, but if I could, [I'd] bring it back.”
