Keke Palmer Opens Up About Her Coming Out Journey

As a public figure, especially as a multi-hyphenate actor-director-writer-singer, Keke Palmer is no stranger to questions about her sexuality. Many of those questions have come from herself, and she has been consistently candid about her own journey through the confusion. Recently, during an appearance on The Best Podcast Ever with Raven and Miranda, Palmer explained how she learned to stop “overthinking” it all.

Back in 2017, Palmer described herself as fluid on The Wendy Williams Show. Earlier this year, while accepting the Vanguard Award at the LA LGBT Center Gala, Palmer shared her struggle in more detail.

“Sexuality and identity for me has always been confusion,” she said. “You know, it’s, ‘I never felt straight enough. I never felt gay enough. And I never felt woman enough. I never felt man enough.’ You know, I always felt like I was a little bit of everything.”

Now speaking to podcast hosts Raven Symone and her wife Miranda Maday, Palmer described how she came to let that struggle go. “There was a moment in my life where I was like ya know, can I be myself?” she said. “The moment where you overthink shit. That’s not even me, why am I overthinking this? I guess you just get to the point where I want my life to be my own life.”

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“I have found it has been very enlightening and probably the happiest in my adult life.”

But getting to that place was far from easy. Being attracted to both men and women added to her confusion as well as the pressure to hide. “In my household, my parents were never like, ‘You go to hell for being gay,’” she explained. “They weren’t actually like that at all.

“But there is like an unsaid thing that can make you feel — and because I liked guys too, I was kinda like, ‘Well, we don’t have to talk about it.’ Because I like guys too, it was like, that’s another extra thing that no one really has to know about. I don’t really have to live out.”

Palmer recalled her teenage years, when she discovered that she could not hide her sexuality from her family. In the end, she was encouraged by their reaction.

“Sexuality and stuff like that, that was not even – my parents never even cared about something like that or talked about that,” she said. “And I know that by the time they saw how free of a spirit I was, and whoever I wanted to date, they were like ‘Whoever cares.’ It was never anything that was in their mind.”

Eventually, it was wanting to pursue her life to the fullest that inspired Palmer to stop worrying about her sexuality. “I guess it was me getting to a place of wanting love, really, and realizing that I really wanted to be open to it, and I didn’t want anything to hold me back from it,” she explained.

“I ultimately just feel like the acceptance of that part of myself, in general, was a part of my process of being able to have love in my life.”