When Keke Palmer participated in
Vanity Fair's ongoing
Lie Detector Test series, she quickly went viral, not for what she knew—but for what she didn’t. When the questioning turned to her time playing the titular character in the Nickelodeon show,
True Jackson, VP, the interviewer asked whether she felt she was a better VP than real-life US vice president Dick Cheney. It's certainly a compelling character study, but it turns out Keke actually has no idea who that man is . . . like, at all."I hate to say it, I hope I don’t sound ridiculous," she said, shaking her head. "I don’t know who this man is. I mean he could be walking down the street, and I wouldn’t know a thing… Sorry to this man."Her complete rejection of the man in the photo has inspired a whole
host of online memes, from
desired reactions to exes, to
Dory from Finding Nemo comparisons. While the video took on a completely new meaning online, Keke had an opportunity Sunday night to address the situation when she appeared on
Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. Basically, she honestly didn't know who Dick Cheney was and she's not sorry about it."I was just thrown… I truly was sorry to that man," she said, adding that when later discovering who he was, she was "glad (she) didn’t know!"
To be fair, Cheney served as vice president under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009, when Keke was but a tender eight to 16 years old. And let’s be honest, she was probably too busy playing the fictional veep on her show to be caught up in real-world politics (where Cheney was
certainly making an impact). She also apparently didn't notice that the photo was exactly what
Christian Bale looked like for about a year, but that's neither here nor there.Keke's Cheney ignorance doesn’t mean she doesn’t know her stuff, however—quite the opposite. In fact, the test covered all manner of subjects, from dating to spelling to her celeb friends, and it turns out Keke’s quite the wordsmith, correctly spelling "pulchritude" (her character's
winning word in 2006's
Akeelah and the Bee) on her first go. But there’s no getting that past a lie detector test, is there?
