Fans would argue that Keke Palmer's best role to date is Keke Palmer. She's charming, funny, and without a doubt the best dressed person in the room at all times. But even though the actor, 28, has had dozens of starring roles in her more than two decades in the entertainment industry, simultaneously delivered chart-topping hits like “Bottoms Up,” achieved viral meme status, and reeled in 11 million Instagram followers, there's one role she says she was bummed to lose out on.
“I auditioned for [2005 comedy] Are We There Yet? and I remember being so sad I didn't get it,” Palmer tells Glamour in her July cover interview, referencing the family film starring Ice Cube as a kid-hating bachelor. The role ended up going to Aleisha Allen.
“But when I look back on it, I wasn't ready,” Palmer adds. “When I was, I got the opportunity to do the movie The Long Shots, [also] with Ice Cube. That's why I always say everything is not always for you.”
She did, it should be noted, also snag another role between 2005's Are We There Yet? and 2008's The Long Shots—a little movie called Akeelah and the Bee, the 2006 film that made Palmer a household name at just 13 years old.
The actor credits her mom with helping her cope with rejection in the industry, which can be brutal for any actor, let alone an actor who's still in middle school. Specifically, her mom's emphasis on God's will helped her not take rejection personally. “I wouldn't feel like, ‘Oh, they didn't want me.’ I'd feel like, ‘Oh, that wasn't what God wanted,’” she says.
In the end, it all worked out. Palmer is the star of Jordan Peele's hotly anticipated summer horror film, Nope, which might just be her biggest role to date.
“Sometimes if you wait and keep trucking, growing, and doing your own thing, greater things will come,” she says.