Unfiltered, Unbothered, Unmatched: Keke Palmer Live
Keke Palmer joins the cast of I Love Boosters at SXSW 2026. Photo by Ribbon Magazine.
South by Southwest (SXSW) is back and better than ever! With multiple headliners across vast categories such as TV and film for Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, and featured sessions with guest speakers such as Jamie Lee Curtis, this festival is still definitely in its prime.
SXSW, an annual week-long festival in Austin, Texas, that intersects the tech, film, and music industries, is as significant as Austin City Limits. The second day of the event kicked off with a featured session featuring Keke Palmer herself.
Keke Palmer is a critically acclaimed American actress and singer. Rising to fame as a child star in Akeelah and the Bee (2006) and True Jackson, VP. Known for authenticity and humor, Palmer has placed herself on the map at this year’s social event.
At SXSW, Palmer and the cast of I Love Boosters, starring Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Eiza González, Poppy Liu, and Demi Moore, took the festival for a spin as they did a live podcast recording of Palmer’s hit podcast, “Baby, this is Keke Palmer.”
I Love Boosters, directed by Boots Riley, focuses on a crew of professional shoplifters targeting high-end fashion, blending commentary on class, culture, and capitalism. During the live recording, the cast delved into how the film came alive with an audience, especially at SXSW, and how powerful it is to feel the room’s reaction together.
"It was wonderful. I feel like it was really electric. Films come to life until you see it with an audience,” Ackie said.
Keke Palmer takes the stage at SXSW 2026, addressing the audience against the festival’s vibrant, rainbow‑striped backdrop. Photo by Ribbon Magazine
The cast said there's a focus on Boots Riley’s unique, surreal creative vision and how working with him felt like a “fever dream” that only fully made sense once they saw the finished film.
They connected the movie to lived experiences of getting high‑end fashion through informal or illicit means, as a way for working‑class or marginalized people to access worlds otherwise closed to them, build identity, and create their own culture.
“It’s also like it feels like someone sharing something with you that you can aspire to, and you can have a little bit of to create your own vision of yourself, which kind of leads to power in your life. And there's something so special as well, even though it's great, yes, about how you can take little bits of everything and you turn it into a culture,” Ackie said.
The discussion then shifted to how powerful it is when people come together rather than just chasing individual success.
“The thing that in watching it last night with the audience, that really moved me was seeing the shift from a singular focus for oneself versus the collective focus of people coming together, and the impact we can make when we're not just working for our own self,” Moore said.
