# Transcript: Featured Session: Baby, This is Keke Palmer Live **Date:** March 13, 2026 · 10:00 PM **Session:** [Featured Session: Baby, This is Keke Palmer Live](/sessions/2026-03-13/pp1150589-featured-session-baby-this-is-keke-palmer-live) ## Summary A live podcast recording of 'Baby, This is Keke Palmer' featuring the cast of Boots Riley's new film 'I Love Boosters' — Demi Moore, Eiza González, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, and Poppy Liu. The conversation explores the film's themes of class solidarity, consumerism, and moral gray areas, while the cast shares personal stories from set including Taylour Paige's pregnancy during filming. ## Topics `film` · `class solidarity` · `consumerism` · `boots riley` · `i love boosters` · `podcast` · `women in film` · `social commentary` ## Key Takeaways 1. Boots Riley's 'I Love Boosters' uses a story about professional shoplifters to deliver social commentary on class struggle, consumerism, and the systems that condition us to idolize wealth while maintaining a moral compass. 2. The film argues that borders are not real and that class struggle is a global, international movement — a message the cast felt was eerily timely despite being filmed much earlier. 3. Boots Riley's directing style involves deep observation and minimal imposition, allowing actors to bring their authentic selves to their characters, resulting in nuanced performances that avoid linear hero-villain dynamics. 4. The cast reflected on how the film mirrors real life's duality — critiquing systems we simultaneously benefit from — and how awareness of this paradox is the first step toward seeing each other more fully. 5. Taylour Paige shared how her pregnancy during filming and the birth of her son initiated her into 'living inside her life,' shifting from hyper-functioning to being present. ## Full Transcript I'm so excited guys to be here with you. My new film, I Love Boosters, directed by the brilliant Boots Riley, has just had the world premiere here in Austin. What did you guys think? Did you check it out? Professional shoplifters engaging in what we call fashion forward — stealing from a fashion logo to send a message about power, money and consumerism. But the best part of making this film was getting to work with some truly incredible women, and I am so excited to talk with them about this movie. So please welcome Demi Moore, Eiza González, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, and Poppy Liu. How are you guys feeling after last night? Everybody got to see the movie with people — like we watched it before, but it's different when you get to watch it with an audience, especially like one like South by Southwest, the perfect audience. So how do you guys feel after just getting that reaction? It was wonderful. I feel like it was really electric. I just don't think films come to life until you see it with an audience. It allows you to forget that you're on screen, which is only easy when you're watching yourself. It was incredible to feel the response and also to be part of a film that you want to see. You want the communal experience. The movie has multiple movies in it. When people hear me talking about it, they're like, I thought this movie was about boosters. But Boots Riley doesn't just make movies — he builds worlds. They're creative and they're surreal. What drew each of you to this story? Working with Boots has been like a bucket list career dream. When I was first sent this script, I was ecstatic. Boots and I had a Zoom and it's a complicated world. Some scripts you read, it's very intuitive. He kind of had to say the vision. Even when we were filming it, a lot of it is a fever dream that is his mind. Until you're sitting there seeing the final product, you're like, oh my God, that's what he was envisioning the entire time. I remember just thinking, even if I don't get this role, I already feel so happy that I got the chance to talk to him. It's reminding me that the right creative collaborators are out there. And it gave me a feeling of hope. And then I did get to do it with him, and that was such a dream come true. I just finished filming something that was really dark, and so this came in, and y'all were already attached, and I thought this will be really fun. But I also really wanted to work with Boots. The minute my agent said Boots Riley has a new film, they couldn't even finish the sentence. I was like, send it now. And we met, and then I didn't hear anything. And then I was pregnant. And so when they said, you know, you're doing it — we went to dinner and I guess your character couldn't be pregnant, so we had to figure it out. I Love Boosters, at its core, is grappling with the idea of — well, technically the characters are criminals, but hopefully they're making a statement. So how did this film make you look at that moral gray area? I remember obviously I'm not from the States, and we didn't call it boosting back home. But at school time or at lunchtime, you'd go down the market and you're seeing high-end stuff that literally were in the shop next door, which is crazy. But it was the thing that we could afford. It was a thing that gave us access to a world that we didn't have. And yeah, it's great, but it's also community. It feels like someone's sharing something with you that you can aspire to, and you can have a little bit of it to create your own vision of yourself, which kind of leads to power. There's something so special about how you can take little bits of everything and turn it into a culture. That is what is special about working class and marginalized communities. You take little things and you collect them, and then you make it into your own. The cost from the big man isn't as big — they take more than we get. What really moved me was seeing the shift from a singular focus for oneself versus the collective focus of people coming together, and the impact when we're not just working for our own self. That was deeply moving. I really love the mirroring that happens between Christie Smith and Corvette, because there's this idea that Christie is the bad guy. And that can be true in many ways, but you also see Corvette go on this journey where — what would it be like if she had a chance to be on top? She has to look around and go through that transition where she's looking up at this person she's mimicking, that she aspires to have success like, but at the same time she's slowly forgetting the people around her. I think it's so important that no matter where you're standing from, integrity is something you have to be conscious of. What really hit me when watching your performance was the concept of how we are conditioned as a society to idolize these people while still having a moral compass. She is a completely morally balanced human being, yet somehow we are all trapped into this vortex — you see her when she talks, her eyes glisten. She has an identity of her own, she knows who she is, yet she's like a fly to the light. I think it really encompasses the world we live in, especially with social media now. We kind of hate it but love it. We all live in this dimension of duality. The film captures that because you're not just villainizing her. I have to say it owes to the performances — everyone brings something very nuanced. It's not linear. Why do I want to be her if she is this version that I hate and I'm fighting, but yet I still want to be her? I think we can all see ourselves in those moments throughout life — that is the real human experience. Boots is really good at understanding society. He does social commentary, and he's always on point. He's quiet — on set he's just observing, observing, observing, and then he plasters it into art. People will watch this movie and rewatch it and get so much more from it, because these are very fundamentally balanced women yet still being swayed by one thing they hate. We all have a sense that it doesn't have to be this way, and we're all victims of it but also benefit from it. We critique America but we all benefit from being here. The world is going to continue to spin, and we're going to continue to want to wear clothes and have nice things. Most of the world doesn't have options. Most of the world has one pair of shoes. So this kind of awareness is very important. I think it's so iconic that we have a whole sequence where we're fully in China. This entire movie works without us having to go to China. I keep saying that Boosters feels like a movie that is Trojan horse-y — a story about class solidarity and class struggle. You could have kept it just here, with enough tension between the characters about the value of material goods and what options someone has. But he took it all the way back to where the clothes are coming from. Who is making that? Because we're all the star of our own story, and we're all on one side of the thing. I think he's saying that borders are not real, and the thing that unites us all is class struggle, and that it needs to be a global, international movement. Sort of revolutionary. It blows my mind because we filmed this movie a while ago, and it couldn't be more exact to this moment. It feels like he filmed it two weeks ago. He's a person of the people. He makes movies for people, for audiences. He's not someone who's flustered about what Hollywood wants. He's a man who has something really important to say outside of the system. The point is to criticize the system while being in the system — it's quite meta. Most of these revolutionary characters are women. He's a father, he's a partner. He gets it in a deep, cellular way. That last moment in the movie moves you. It hits you deep when you're turning on the news and seeing what's going on in the world. When you watch characters like this going through these journeys, it makes you believe — my life has purpose even if I'm in a small place. My desires, my dreams, what I look for, I can go for it. Don't let the system brainwash you, because it's designed for us to be completely drawn by it. The pendulum swings so far right and so far left, and now people are pushing back. We see it with the strikes, we saw it with Black Lives Matter. The system doesn't dictate anymore. There is an irony about a film about class being told through Hollywood, and that irony is not lost on any of us. But that's what makes it special. Part of my excitement about working with Boots is about who he is as a person. At his level as a director, he has never shied away from being politically outspoken regardless of repercussions. He was one of the first to speak about Gaza and Palestine and the genocide, and he has never wavered. He did that knowing there would be a cost. I struggle with artists who do important storytelling with their art but in their personal life can't follow that moral code. Boots — it's not a performance. It's not at all. The truth is the truth. It'll always be the truth whether you acknowledge it or not. That's how he lives his life. He's just speaking his truth. And Boots's baseline is still all with an open heart. We could disagree and there's still just this openness. What would it be like if we all sat with different perspectives with an open heart? I don't really agree, but I'm open my heart to you, and you open your heart to me — we could do something with that. The vibes on set were incredible. We were always talking, having conversations — it could have been about pizza, it could have been about the State of the Union. But we were always having dialog and it felt really good. When Demi came in, she sat right down in the middle of the floor and said, hey girls, how's it going? And we just got into it. Because I was pregnant, the baby was pushing — I peed on myself twice, once on set and once in the hallway. We were collapsed on the floor laughing. I feel like we were telling each other our business on this job. Sometimes you're on set and these are your colleagues, but then there are jobs where it's like — these are my people. Do you guys remember when the doctor came and made us hear the heartbeat? The doctor came to our set. She happened to be a doula and midwife, and she let me hear his heartbeat all the time. There was once when we were looking for it and I got a little panicked, and the girls would start talking to keep me calm. I'm so grateful to all of you. I feel like you raised him in there, because I laughed so much, and he's so happy. He's so healthy, he's so beautiful. Birthing him initiated me into this life that I've always wanted for myself. I just feel like I'm finally living inside my life. You guys being there with me was so amazing. We just laughed so much — he was in there, probably like, okay, this is fun. Kids really have this incredible power. When we're in our kind of industry or our kind of world where you're working, working, everybody's hyper-functioning and trying to do it right — you end up just being the product. You're not even being, you're human doing. For me, that was really big when I had my son, because he's just being. You start feeling like, I want to be like you. They're on an acid trip all day. Wow, the sky. Here I am in this moment. My feet, my hands. Everything is a discovery. All these amazing things of being alive — it really is about love, to be alive, to love the people around you. I remember when we did that first read-through before we started filming. We were just doing the lines, our first session. I'm a very rhythm person — I don't care if it's comedy or drama. I'm always hearing the voices as beats, like music in my ear. And we were doing the lines and I was like, this beat is quick. How did Boots know we were going to sound like this? Because we were like ping, ping, ping — the rhythm just matched. And that's when I knew Boots is not just a great writer-director but his casting is impeccable. We match. We didn't even do a chemistry reading beforehand. The rehearsal was three to four hours long. He went through scenes maybe two times maximum. And what I admire about Boots is that he takes up zero space as a man. We'd be yapping and he'd just observe with a few smiles on his face. At the end we asked, do we need to rehearse the scene more? And he was like, no, I think that's the rehearsal. He has this quality of seeing people. There are directors with vision and some that follow the pattern of what the industry tells them — she's the cool girl, that's the cool person. He doesn't care. He's like, who are you? What's your deal? And I felt that when I watched all of you perform. He's not trying to impose onto you. He's letting the collaboration exist. It's not a casualty that most of the performances are good. A lot of actors go on to other movies and don't get these performances. Why? Because you have a director who's imposing, not collaborating. Who would think of me as a goth physicist? Nobody. He's like, I see something — you're a fighter. I feel that way inside but no one sees me that way. That is a blessing. When you leave the set and watch this movie, you're just like, thank you for giving us a director that sees me and sees what my voice wants to say as an artist, as an individual. That man is gold. --- *Source: stt · Language: en · Model: anthropic/claude-opus-4-6* [← Back to session](/sessions/2026-03-13/pp1150589-featured-session-baby-this-is-keke-palmer-live)