The 'Nope' actress also shared how she hit up Jordan Peele's DMs before landing the role of Emerald.
Keke Palmer is quickly becoming one of the biggest names in Hollywood, and now, she's taking over a whole new world: the Metaverse.
ET spoke with the 28-year-old ahead of the premiere of her new metaverse show, Are We There Yet? The series will air on Meta's Facebook and Instagram pages and aims to help shine a light on developments in the Metaverse.
"[The show] does exactly what I always wanted to do, which is just inform everybody about all the great things that are happening digitally," Palmer tells ET's Lauren Zima. "I remember when I first worked on expanding my work on Instagram -- I was really able to become not only a creator but a producer. I became an editor because of the access I got, so when we think about the Metaverse it's the same exact thing."
It's safe to say that Palmer knows how to put the access she's been given to good use. The actress famously turned her Instagram and TikTok skits, aptly named Southern Belle Insults, into a short story collection co-written with Jasmine Guillory, author of the best-selling romance novels The Wedding Date and The Proposal.
She also led the Facebook Watch series Turnt Up With the Taylors, a satirical take on the reality genre about a family navigating the future of their "Taylor Time" reality show after daughter Chelsea "Barbie" Taylor (a character Palmer created on Instagram) decides to break free for solo fame. Palmer plays all five parts in addition to co-creating, co-writing and producing the eight-episode short-form comedy series, which she developed in partnership with production company Kids at Play and Facebook Watch after pitching the idea. The project earned her a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series.
With Are We There Yet?, the actress is taking a more informational route that's reminiscent of shows such as Bill Nye the Science Guy and her now-defunct talk show Just Keke. The first-ever host in the Metaverse will welcome artists, creators, experts and other guests to travel together in a car through a future vision of the Metaverse and discuss ways that the developing environment will help people feel closer and be more collaborative, and how it will be built by everybody.
If you're wondering what the Metaverse is, Palmer explained the concept as "a graduation of what we know as the internet today."
"If you've ever put on a VR headset, you can go into Horizon world," she adds. "You can go to a comedy club, you can go to a concert, you can hang out with your friends and you pretty much are taking that experience you have online and making it a little more realistic."
According to Palmer, Are We There Yet? aims to encourage creatives to see Metaverse as "a space out here for you, and the more that we're engaged with it, the better we can make it the fuller that it becomes."
Meanwhile, in this verse, the actress is enjoying a bright spot in her career, soaking in critical and commercial acclaim for her starring role in Jordan Peele's Nope.
"It feels so exciting, I'm just kinda stunned watching it all go down," the actress says about the wave of praise for the film and her performance. "I don't think there are any words that I can really express, it's just kinda one of those things where you're just happy and elated and I'm proud of what we did."
Palmer, who has become known for shooting her shot when it comes to future projects, admitted that she vied for a spot by sliding into Peele's DM's, but the filmmaker never read her message. "I guess he was just thinking about me somehow, or saw my work over the few years and thought I was a good fit," she says, recalling that the message reminded Peele of Palmer's appearance on a Key & Peele sketch and asked that he keep her in mind for the future. "I wish I could take full credit for that."
The Key & Peele sketch was Palmer's first real introduction to sketch, which she called "crazy" since she's made the concept a huge part of her repertoire. "I think over the last few years of seeing my work he just felt like I could encapsulate [this character]," she adds. "I remember him saying, 'I wrote her only with you in mind,' so that was just like the greatest compliment I could've ever had."
And when it comes to her years of working in the industry, Palmer said that the biggest lesson she would share with her younger self is to "just keep going."
"One of the biggest things that the 20 years in this industry has taught me is that you're always gonna have ebbs and flows," she notes. "There are gonna be moments where everything you're doing is trending all over the place and everybody wants to be a part of it, and then there are gonna be other times where you do things that maybe not everybody is streaming. But as long as they're personal and they mean something to you artistically, it doesn't matter. That's the truth of it -- stay true to yourself, stay authentic to what drives you as an artist and no matter where the wind blows you, you're gonna always be OK."
Are We There Yet? debuts July 26 and features Meta vice president of the Metaverse Vishal Shah.
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