Lionel Richie’s name has a detail Keke Palmer wasn’t looking for.
But now, it’ll be difficult for her to overlook it. The Nope alum recently shared how she learned fans have been mispronouncing the “Hello” singer’s first name wrong for years.
“Lionel Richie and [I] were kicking back with our feet up sipping so much tea, I was hoping the mics weren’t catching what we were throwing down,” Keke, 32, recalled during her Jan. 3 interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “He was talking about himself. He was like, ‘You know…’”
Before the 76-year-old—who shares kids Nicole Richie, 44, with ex-wife Brenda Harvey, as well as Miles Richie, 31, and Sofia Richie, 27, with Diane Alexander—could finish his sentence, someone interrupted him by saying his first name. Specifically, they pronounced it as lye-nell instead of lye-nol, and Keke was shocked to hear that inflection.
“I said, ‘Now, wait a minute. This whole time, you ain’t been Lye-nol Richie? You’ve been Lye-nell?’” she jokingly recalled. “So then I had to act like I knew. I was like, ‘Oh, Lye-nell!’ So me and Lionel are thick as thieves. That’s my new bestie, y’all!”
