Keke Palmer – Leveling Up

Actress Keke Palmer couldn't be busier, which is why she's prioritizing "precharging" rather than recharging-and exercising her right to say no. Habits like these keep her healthy.

- By Jeannine Amber

Keke Palmer is a force of nature.

Take the way she speaks, for instance-rapid-fire and full of vigor, as if she had just been blasted from a cannon. Even on this lazy afternoon, she is bursting with energy, which is especially impressive since only moments before, she'd been at the spa. I'd expected her to have that post-massage floating-on-air vibe. Instead, Keke, 29, speeds forward like a woman on a mission. And right now, that mission is to tell me about the retreat, where she's been for the past five days. It's a spa, she says. But it's really like a health clinic. So, I've been meditating, resting, doing yoga, juicing, working out-just all this spiritual and health grounding. In other words, this wasn't a primp-and-pamper situation. Keke was preparing physically and mentally for hectic days ahead.

In a few weeks, Keke, who's been acting steadily for more than two decades, will head out on a whirlwind promo tour in support of two of her biggest roles yet: starring opposite Daniel Kaluuya and Steven Yeun in Jordan Peele's hotly anticipated spine-chilling thriller, Nope, and as the voice of Izzy in Disney/Pixar's Lightyear. The latter project will bring her to the U.S. Naval Observatory in D.C. to join Vice President Kamala Harris as she screens the film for military families; the former will take Keke around the world.