Keke Palmer has spent years developing Lady Miss Jacqueline, a larger-than-life Southern belle she first created for a 2016 digital sketch series called Southern Belle Insults. Now she is using the microdrama format to push the character into more highly produced territory.
The three-part microseries, Southern Belle Insults: The Pre-Wedding Shenanigans of Lady Miss Jacqueline, began rolling out on Audible and Palmer's social channels on Monday. It serves as a promotional companion to her Audible original project, The Weddings of Lady Miss Jacqueline, which features voice acting from Sheryl Lee Ralph, Audra McDonald, and Danielle Brooks, among others.
In the new microseries, Lady Miss Jacqueline wakes up on her wedding day to find several suitors who are not her husband in her bedroom.
Palmer told TheWrap in an email Q&A that the format fits the character. "Microdramas take what we love about over-the-top soap operas and deliver endless histrionic moments, and that is right up Lady Miss Jacqueline's alley!" she said. "Lady Miss Jacqueline has gone through multiple husbands and hostile takeovers. She is a walking soap opera."
The project is rooted in comedy influences Palmer traces back to childhood. "I grew up watching Whoopi Goldberg and reruns of 'The Carol Burnett Show' with my grandmother, and I was truly fascinated with all the characters these women created and shared with the world," she explained in the Q&A. That fascination drove her toward character-based comedy, but she found the traditional industry was not making it easy to get there.
"I wanted to do that kind of comedy as well. However, the traditional doors of Hollywood were not necessarily opening for me in this genre," she said. "If I wanted to show people what I could do in comedy, I had to produce the content myself."
Earlier this summer, Palmer performed standup as Lady Miss Jacqueline on The Tonight Show, doing so in character for an extended routine. She said the inspiration for that came from watching old Tonight Show episodes. "I kept going back to the original 'Tonight Show' with Johnny Carson and even Jay Leno, and how they would have comedians sometimes come out in character and do a whole routine as their alter ego, like the fabulous Flip Wilson as Geraldine, or Ruth Buzzi as the hilariously funny Gladys Ormphby," she said. "It was scary, but in my heart, I am a throwback to the old vaudeville days, and doing it live was what they did."
The microseries also features Real Housewives of Atlanta alum Phaedra Parks and comedy creator Zachariah Porter.
Palmer has described herself and her character work as a throwback to vaudeville. The microseries format, she said, gave her room to perform within a genre on a tight timetable while still feeling creatively fulfilled.
