Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor Credits Keke Palmer With Helping Her Land Bigger Hollywood Roles, But An Awesome Appearance 3 Years Earlier Would Have Been My Answer

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor has many roles under her belt these days, with more than 80 acting credits credited to her name, including some hitting the 2025 movie schedule. However, before The Mentalist, If Beale Street Could Talk, Quantico, Lovecraft Country, Nickel Boys, The Color Purple and even before she joined the cast of Justified: City Primeval, the actress says it was Keke Palmer who really helped her to land meatier roles. This was a surprise for me, as I remember her career really shifting into high gear thanks to another TV role.

In 2012, Ellis-Taylor starred opposite Ms. Palmer in the Lifetime original movie Abducted: The Carlina White Story. In the movie, she played a nurse who had abducted a baby from a hospital system years before and had raised her on her own, all while the child’s birth parents were still searching for her.

The made-for-TV movie was based on a true story, and it’s a role that was higher profile for the actress at the time. She said in a speech while accepting an American Black Film Festival (ABFF) honor (via Variety) that if it wasn't for Keke Palmer and her mother, she might not have ever gotten the chance to really launch a major Hollywood career, noting of Carlina White:

Of course I would never want to take away the actress’ own thoughts on her career and the pivotal moment she felt like things changed for her, but I do think it's worth noting Ellis-Taylor was already starting to make her mark on the industry a few years before that.

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s Good Wife Episode Is The One That Really Put The Actress On My Radar

In 2009, Ellis-Taylor had a one-off appearance on The Good Wife, then in its first season on CBS. The show was already a critical darling (and led to spinoffs that have become critical darlings), and the actress landed a role in one of the most memorable early Alicia Florrick episodes. In it, she played Linda Underwood in an episode where Alicia was defending three widows whose husbands had been involved in a fatal train crash. Subsequently, the company was trying to push the blame onto the dead men, leaving the widows with no pensions. It’s a mess of an episode culminating in Alicia having to make a difficult moral choice, but it’s the scenes with Ellis-Taylor that stand out.

By 2010, she’d landed a role as Madeleine Hightower in The Mentalist, and while she didn’t have the world’s biggest role on the CBS series, it was a popular procedural that plenty of people still revisit today. Plus, her role was memorable and lasted for plenty of episodes. It felt then that she was well on the way to making a name for herself.

Regardless, the connection with Keke Palmer and her mom was obviously cool and extremely meaningful for her. It certainly amplified her profile quite a bit when the movie came out in 2012, but I’d like to think the kind of roles she's garnered since would have come in another way if Palmer hadn’t been there.

At the end of the day, it’s always cool when a major actress shouts out another major actress, and Ellis-Taylor and Palmer’s connection years later is still a fun BTS story about the inner workings of Hollywood. Now, excuse me while I go watch Abducted: The Carlina White Story with my Amazon subscription.