“A southern belle doesn’t give you insults like just ole anybody. She gives it like a southern belle,” says Keke Palmer, actress, singer, host, producer, and author of the new Amazon Original Stories Southern Belle Insults on this week’s episode of The Root Presents: It’s Lit! “She does it very undercut, you know what I mean? And you almost don’t even know if you should say ‘thank you’ or be offended.”
The series—which is accompanied by an absolutely hilarious audio narration by Palmer herself (which we highly recommend), was inspired by the entertainer’s viral online entity Lady Miss Jacqueline and a cast of other characters she has previously made famous on social media. Co-written with New York Times bestselling romance author Jasmine Guillory (The Wedding Date, etc.), the catalytic component for these tales is a series of transformative wigs. What’s in a wig, you ask? Palmer’s protagonist Janet finds out, under the guidance of a mysterious wigmaker and the always scathing Lady Miss Jacqueline.
“You know, when you put on a new wig or you get a new look, you do access a different part of yourself, you know?” Palmer explains. “But the reality is, all those parts of yourself have always existed—but sometimes [we] need to change our hair up or do something different in order to really feel like we’re giving ourselves permission for that. And I’ve always kind of loved these fantasy, whimsical stories that bring us back to the kind of interpersonal tale of self-acceptance. And that is the real story here...when [Janet] puts on wigs and she starts to slowly transform, she’s realizing, well, she ends up realizing that she’s always been this multifaceted dynamic queen.”
Hear more from the multifaceted and dynamic Keke Palmer in Episode 57 of The Root Presents: It’s Lit!: Keke Palmer Slings Southern Belle Insults, available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Google Podcasts, Amazon, NPR One, TuneIn, and Radio Public.