Like many, I discovered actress Keke Palmer through her breakthrough performance in 2006’s “Akeelah and the Bee”, for which she earned a Critics Choice Awards nomination. (Then I found out she and I share a birthday.) Two years later, she was starring opposite Ice Cube in football film “The Longshots” and headlining her own Nickelodeon series, “True Jackson, VP”.
Voice work was in her future, with TV’s “Winx Club” and as the older Peaches in 2012’s “Ice Age: Continental Drift” and 2016’s feature “Collision Course” and Easter special “The Great Egg-Scapade”. Other Palmer performances in the 2010s included work on “Scream Queens”, in the music dramedy “Joyful Noise” (opposite Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton) and in director Lorene Scafaria’s ensemble crime drama “Hustlers”, with Jennifer Lopez.
This is a major summer for Palmer. She can currently be heard as Izzy Hawthorne in Disney and Pixar’s “Lightyear”. Next month, she stars as Emerald Haywood in Jordan Peele’s third feature film “Nope”, with Daniel Kaluuya and Steven Yeun. And starting August 5th, she’ll host a new NBC primetime version of “Password”, executive produced by Jimmy Fallon (who will also appear on it every week).
It’s not the first hosting gig for Palmer. She temporarily joined Michael Strahan and Sara Haines on ABC’s third hour of “GMA” program before COVID hit in early 2020, earning a Daytime Emmy nomination for her time on the show.