Keke Palmer may be best known for her acting roles, but she’s confident she could have used her singing chops to win one of TV’s most iconic reality shows.

“Which reality show do you think you’d have the best shot of winning?” Sean Evans asked Palmer on the Monday, September 15, episode of his YouTube series, Hot Ones. She replied, “I know for a fact, if it was at the right time, the right era, your girl would’ve been an American Idol.”

Palmer added, “I would’ve been up there with my girl Fantasia. Not her season though, ’cause she would’ve beaten me. But I would’ve been up in there, I know I could’ve made it at some point. American Idol.”

Palmer said one thing that would have worked to her advantage was the fact that she “had a storyline.” She explained, “‘I’m from Chicago. My mom was a singer growing up, I grew up in church.’… You had to have that back in the day. You needed that storyline. I would’ve ate the damn America up.”

Palmer ended the conversation by declaring, “I feel like I would’ve been an American Idol.”

American Idol has launched the careers of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson, Adam Lambert, and Katharine McPhee. The series premiered on Fox in 2002 and later moved to ABC for Season 16 in 2018.

While Palmer didn’t get the chance to compete on American Idol, she did audition for the show’s one-season spinoff, America Juniors. Her audition scenes were ultimately cut from the show, but she went on to find success as a child actor in films and shows such as Barbershop 2: Back in Business, Madea’s Family Reunion, Akeelah and the Bee, Jump In!, True Jackson, VP, Joyful Noise, and Scream Queens.

In recent years, Palmer has continued to grow her star in projects such as Hustlers, Nope, Human Resources, One of Them Days, and The Pickup.

Outside of acting, Palmer has also established herself as an accomplished singer, releasing several singles and EPS over the years. Palmer released her debut studio album, So Uncool, in 2007, followed by 2023’s Big Boss and 2025’s Just Keke.

Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images for ESSENCE

Palmer has opened up about experiencing struggles in the music industry. “It was just really stifling. I learned a lot of stuff just about what I really needed as an artist, which was artist development,” she told People in May 2023 of signing with Atlantic Records when she was 12 years old. “I really spent a lot of those years figuring out what went wrong or why things weren’t connecting for me as an artist. I think with labels, there isn’t any artist development. A lot of times they’ll try stuff to throw stuff out, then it doesn’t work and it’s your fault. They don’t really support the artists in being able to discover how to share their voice, how to tell their story.”

Palmer later launched her own record label, Big Bosses Entertainment, in 2018, to put out music on her own terms and timeline. “I’m talented, I can sing, I can perform, I can do all that, but knowing how to present that to the world, there’s still an art to that,” she continued. “My experience with labels taught me that I had to figure that out because they weren’t able to really help me with it.”