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American singer and actor, Keke Palmer is looking back on her past relationship with older men.
The actress says 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 Wednesday, October 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 Nickelodeon 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.”
“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, Keke Palmer obtained a temporary domestic violence restraining order against the fitness instructor. In the year since, Keke and Darius have reached a joint custody agreement.
