Keke Palmer's parents made $40,000 a year at their best. At 15, she says, she was making that per episode of her own Nickelodeon show. One day she told her father: "I'm the one making all the money."
In the video below, she breaks down telling Shannon Sharpe what he said back.
At 12 she had starred in Akeelah and the Bee. The show was True Jackson, VP. It premiered in 2008, and it made her the family's breadwinner.
Her father, Larry, worked for a polyurethane company. Her mother taught high school. They moved the family from Illinois to California for her career. "My dad gave up his pension for me to have an opportunity for my dreams," she told Sharpe.
Then, she says, people around her started telling her she could go further without them. "You have all these people that are making money off of you, and they're telling you what's best for you and that your parents don't know."
Her mother told her: "I don't want money to come between me and my child." Her parents, she says, wanted her to know they weren't the ones controlling her money.
She hasn't always told it this warmly. "I hated my parents for a long time," she told The Cut. The family depended on her income: "They weren't saying it, but that was the reality."
$40,000 a year for them. $40,000 a show for her.
One famous fortune here every day.
Was her father right, or was a 15-year-old carrying the whole family?
🚨RARE🚨 NETTSPEND 23 MINUTE LONG INSTAGRAM LIVE (11/04/26)
Announced his Vans collab dropping December 1st + he has a lung infection again
#PrayForNett 🙏