Keke Palmer opens up about ‘inappropriate’ relationship with older man while filming Nickelodeon show

Keke Palmer has opened up about being in a relationship with an older man while filming her Nickelodeon show as a teenager.

While promoting her upcoming book Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative, the 31-year-old spoke candidly to People about her experience with toxic relationships, particularly one that took place in her early career while starring as a teen fashion executive in the Nickelodeon sitcom, True Jackson, VP.

“I had a great time doing True Jackson VP, but it was also a very stressful, difficult, depressive time,” Palmer recalled, noting that she had been in an “inappropriate” relationship with an older man at the time.

“I was 15, he was 20,” the Nope actor explained. “I was trying to balance between being really young, but also feeling quite mature. 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,” she continued. “But in my mind, it was like ‘I got a full-time job... Can’t nobody understand me but a grown man.’ But he knew there was a lot of stuff that there’s no d*** way for me to understand at d*** 15.”

The relationship – which Palmer said she kept hidden for years from her loved ones – lasted until she was 20. In hindsight, the actor admitted that the five-year relationship had a long-lasting negative impact.

“I wasn’t mentally able to process and understand things that would’ve made that relationship appropriate,” she admitted. “The power dynamic put me in a place that harmed me in ways I couldn’t have known. I didn’t have the language or the strength to accept that who he met was a child, not the woman I wanted to become.”

The Emmy winner acknowledged that it took a while for her to understand what a real, healthy relationship looked like.

“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, crediting her ex Darius Jackson with shifting her perspective. “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.”

Palmer and Jackson began dating after meeting at a Memorial Day party in May 2021. In December 2022, Palmer revealed she was expecting her first child. She made the announcement during the opening monologue of her Saturday Night Live hosting debut. The couple welcomed their first child, son Leodis “Leo” Andrellton, in February 2023.

In July that year, their relationship took a turn when Jackson publicly shamed Palmer for wearing a sheer dress to Usher’s Las Vegas residency show. He vented his frustrations in a post shared to X/Twitter, writing above a video of Palmer being serenaded by the R&B singer: “It’s the outfit tho... you a mom.”

After receiving widespread backlash, Jackson doubled down on his comments, saying: “We live in a generation where a man of the family doesn’t want the wife and mother to his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others and he gets told how much of a hater he is.”

“This is my family and my representation. I have standards and morals to what I believe,” he said. “I rest my case.”

Palmer later filed for a restraining order against Jackson in November 2023, alleging multiple incidents of physical abuse. She was granted a temporary restraining order against Jackson, along with temporary sole custody of their son.

In December, Jackson filed his own restraining order against Palmer, alleging she “engaged in abusive conduct during the two-and-a-half-year relationship.” However, following court-ordered mediation, Palmer and Jackson reached an amicable agreement for joint custody of Leo.