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Keke Palmer may be Eddie Murphy’s coworker now, but almost 15 years ago, she was just a dinner guest at his house — and excited to be one, at that.
Palmer, 31, and Murphy, 64, both star in Prime Video’s The Pickup, in which Zoe (Palmer) hijacks Russell’s (Murphy) and Travis’ (Pete Davidson) security vehicle to commit a casino robbery. Though this marked Palmer’s first time working with the comedy legend onscreen, it wasn’t the pair’s first interaction.
That happened years ago, in Murphy’s own home.
Palmer is close friends with Murphy’s daughters, she tells PEOPLE, so when she was a teenager, they frequently woke up and went over to each other’s houses to spend the day together. One time, when she was around 19 or 20, they invited her for dinner at their dad’s.
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“I had never met their dad, so they were like, ‘Yo, you want to come to our dad’s for dinner?’ ” Palmer says. “And I’m like, ‘I forgot for five seconds that your daddy is Eddie freaking Murphy. What the hell?’ ”
While Murphy was a bonafide superstar at the time, Palmer recalls him being a “typical dad” at home.
“He was coming downstairs in his pajamas, and he was just playing a guitar, which is the sickest thing that he could play,” she says. “I remember thinking to myself like, ‘Damn, he really is about that life.’ ”
At the time, Palmer admits she kept her admiration to herself. Over a decade later, however, Murphy walked onto set not just as her good friend’s dad, but her coworker.
“Working with him, I had that in the back of my mind and I was like, he probably doesn’t remember that,” the One of Them Days actress says. “But I just want to make sure I’m professional and enjoy this moment, because this is a dream come true for me — to get to this point in my career, where I get to share the screen with Eddie freaking Murphy.”
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And the dream just kept getting better the more time Palmer spent with Murphy while shooting The Pickup. She recalls how, when Murphy steps on set, “everybody gets serious” because of the “level of the prestige” the actor carries — and she didn’t want to be the one to fall out of line.
“You just don’t want to do any bull—,” she jokes. “It’s like he’s only going to be on set with professionals, so you better act like it.”
They say don’t meet your heroes, but for Palmer, working with Murphy truly was a wonderful experience.
Above all, she says, he taught her to “play the truth” in her comedy. While Palmer had heard the same lesson from her mom — whom she credits as her first and only acting teacher — she says it really hit home seeing Murphy bring it to life in front of her eyes.
“Eddie never tries to be funny,” the actress says. “He’s always just being honest in a situation that’s insane … So it’s just a really amazing level of acting and watching that, I feel like it really prepared me for One of Them Days.”
The Pickup is out now on Prime Video.
