5. But that isn’t the only project you have with Audible. You’ve also teamed up with Amazon Original Stories to release a series of short stories based on your hilarious Instagram sketch-comedy videos. Were those characters inspired by anyone in your life?
Lady Miss Jacqueline was not created from someone in my life, but really a person that lives inside of me. I don’t know why, it’s like, in my mind, I think I’m 60 years old or something [laughs]. When I was working with Max Wyatt, who produces a lot of my content with me, we came up with this character pretty much piggybacking off of those moments where he’d be like, “Keke, you just turned into someone else.” So we kind of just created her out of that.
As for Chelsea Barbie Taylor, that character came from favorite celebrities who adopt children from Africa or other countries. I just always wondered what that kid, that Black kid, grows up thinking. Have they been around other Black people? What is their understanding of American Black culture? I just wanted to know what that would’ve been like. So I created the character Chelsea Barbie Taylor, who grew up in a very Hollywood family, and she’s pretty much not the identity that people want to always associate Black people with being. I thought it was a really cool dialogue opener to show people that the Black experience isn’t a monolith. It’s many different things. It’s really culture that makes us different, not the color of our skin — it’s where we grew up, who we were around, what our influences were, etc. I really always love trying to bring things like that to the forefront, where we just kind of push societal norms or societal expectations aside and really unpack things, so that’s where Chelsea Barbie Taylor actually derived from.
6. What can we expect from these short stories?
When it comes to these short stories, I’m taking both Lady Miss Jacqueline, Chelsea Barbie Taylor, and a couple of new characters, and bringing them into a new space and telling a different story. Hopefully, we’ll be unpacking different things: from trying to make it in this world and figure out who you want to be, to following your dreams, to code switching, and assimilation. I’m very excited to use those characters to dive into those things.
