As an actor, do you suppose video games like The Sims innately communicate to you—with the ability to step into another person’s life?

I by no means considered it, but it surely completely is sensible. I’m an entertainer. I act. I carry out. It doesn’t appear too far disconnected.

The Sims is all about world-building. Is KeyTV a part of your world-building?

One hundred p.c. I see myself very objectively. Not like I see myself as a Sims character, however in so some ways I see myself as planning towards issues. I’m very disciplined. Once I make up my thoughts about one thing, I observe via and I determine how you can assist it. As far as KeyTV is worried, it’s one thing that I turned critical a few 12 months in the past. I really feel actually joyful to have gotten to the purpose of launching. I’m wanting ahead to persevering with to construct it. My neighborhood of followers which have at all times adopted me—the Keke Palmer model—I need to introduce them to one thing that may develop past simply me personally.

It’s a battle for folks’s consideration as of late. The market is overcrowded. How does KeyTV minimize via the noise?

So final 12 months was after I filmed Nope, I believe. Did I movie Nope final 12 months? Time has all passed by so quick. 

Our relationship to time is so bizarre now.

Time is so bizarre to me now due to Covid. It was after the peak of Covid; we had been nonetheless within the vibe of the pandemic, by way of retaining masks on, however folks had been exterior. It was summertime and I used to be filming Nope. Personally and career-wise, I used to be in a brand new place. I additionally began to suppose, OK, what can I do exterior of myself? How can I carry one thing that doesn’t simply solely depend upon me? 

Was it an try and do one thing the place you weren’t on the middle? 

That’s the factor. As an entertainer, you’re always a workhorse—not that that’s unhealthy—however all the pieces actually is in the end depending on you. When you consider creating generational wealth or neighborhood wealth you are attempting to take no matter it’s that you simply began or no matter it’s that you’ve and develop it outwards. I believed that KeyTV might be its personal voice within the sense of what I stand for, which is schooling, democratization, and leisure. 

I need to make [entertainment] really feel extra accessible to folks in our neighborhood, particularly Black and brown folks, folks that possibly don’t have rapid sources and entry to the business. I need to bridge that hole.

KeyTV is about fairness behind the digital camera as a lot as it’s in entrance of it. Having labored in Hollywood for thus lengthy, had been you not seeing that form of inclusion on units?

It would rely. Whenever I labored on a Tyler Perry set, yeah. When I did House of Pain or Madea’s Family Reunion, it was at all times tons of Black folks. And that was earlier than it turned a classy factor to do. Now it’s turn out to be a factor. Back after I was 11, 12 years outdated, wasn’t no one caring about using anyone Black. Any time I stepped on a Tyler Perry manufacturing all people was Black. That was the perfect factor about it. It was like being at a household reunion.