Keke Palmer revealed a former manager convinced her her mother would die if she didn’t lose weight.

The beloved 31-year-old actress reflected on her early career in a recent interview with The Cut, admitting that it was difficult to be the breadwinner for her family at such a young age.

“There was so much pressure for my community, my parents, my siblings and their victims to rise to this challenge,” she said in the profile published Tuesday.

“They didn’t say it, but that was the reality. Because I’m the one we all came here to see.”

When Palmer was 12, one of her superiors took advantage of her stress and vulnerability and told her that her mother’s health would deteriorate if she didn’t stay thin and continue to care for her.

“This really left me very traumatized and stressed,” she told the outlet. “I thought she was going to die and thought about things like medical bills. It was just too much.”

Palmer’s mother Sharon has been her manager ever since.

The “Nope” star is the daughter of two non-professional actors and grew up in a working-class home in a Chicago suburb.

She made her screen debut at the age of 10 in Barbershop 2: Back in Business. Less than two years later, she found what she was looking for when she was given the lead role in “Akeelah and the Bee”.

As her parents advanced her career, Palmer said they were “very cautious about the roles she played as a young black child.”

A few years later, she achieved full child star status after being cast as the title character in Nickelodeon’s True Jackson, VP.

The actress said she succeeded in her role as a 15-year-old executive.

“She climbed the corporate ladder and worked an adult job as a child. I felt the same way,” she told the outlet.

“She allowed herself to live independently in the world,” Palmer continued. “Growing up with this character has influenced how I want to perform and how I approach life.”

However, while filming the sitcom, the “Scream Queens” star encountered another ugly side of the Hollywood star.

In October 2024, Palmer told People that she was in an “inappropriate” relationship with an older man when she was 15.

“I was trying to find a balance between feeling really young but also feeling pretty mature,” the “Password” host explained.

“Obviously I shouldn’t have dated a 20-year-old when I was 15, but in my head it was like I had a full-time job… Can’t anyone but a grown man understand me?”

While Palmer didn’t realize their relationship was inappropriate at the time, she said he should have.

“I was mentally unable to process and understand things that would have made this relationship appropriate,” she said.

“But He “I knew there were a lot of things I couldn’t understand at fucking 15,” she added.

The One of Them Days actress kept her relationship secret for five years before calling it quits when she was 20.

In her memoir, “Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative,” the actress said the “power dynamic” between her and the older man “damaged” her in more ways than one.