Keke Palmer Details Being in an “Inappropriate” Relationship With Older Man During Teenage Years

Keke Palmer is looking back on a past relationship through a different lens.

The Nope actress recently shared that while she was a teen starring on True Jackson VP she was in a secret relationship with a 20-year-old man.

“I was trying to balance between being really young, but also feeling quite mature,” the 31-year-old told People in an interview published Oct. 30. “If I thought it was inappropriate, then I wouldn't have done it. Obviously I shouldn’t have been 15 dating no 20-year-old.” 

“But in my mind it was like ‘I got a full-time job…Can’t nobody understand me but a grown man,’” Keke continued. “But he knew there was a lot of stuff that there's no damn way for me to understand at damn 15."

While it hasn’t negated how she felt making her Nickelodon show, it has made looking back a bit more complicated. "I had a great time doing True Jackson VP,” she admitted, “but it was also a very stressful, difficult, depressive time.”

As she put it, “I wasn’t mentally able to process and understand things that would’ve made that relationship appropriate.”

Still, it took her years to understand that her romance with the older man, whom she didn’t name, wasn’t appropriate until she started dating her now-ex-boyfriend Darius Jackson.

"It wasn't until I was a real grown woman, and even then we know we've still got more time to grow. But by 26, 27, 28, I had finally experienced, I think, genuine love," she said of the revelation. "Not that I didn't love that [other] person, but it wasn't until I'd felt what it was like for someone to love me back and to actually give me respect, that I've realized that relationship was wrong."

Keke and Darius, who share son Leodis, 20 months, began their relationship in 2021 before ending it in 2023. 

Shortly after their split, the Baby, This is Keke Palmer host  obtained a temporary domestic violence restraining order against the fitness instructor. In the year since, Keke and Darius have reached a joint custody agreement.

However, amid all the ups and downs she’s faced in the past year, Keke is looking forward to being the best mother for her son.

"I need to be the best for him and to be the best for him, I gotta be the best me," she told E! News in August. "I'm not going to be able to be the best me for him if I'm not focusing on the things that make me the best I can be."

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