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See 12-Year-Old Keke Palmer Hold Her Own with Benson in a Twisty SVU Episode
This Season 7 Law & Order: SVU episode featuring Keke Palmer is a wild ride.
Before she was a megastar hosting Saturday Night Live and Password, Keke Palmer was a young actress who, like many in her field, booked an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. And though she was only a tween at the time, her performance is excellent.
Keke Palmer played Tasha in a 2005 SVU episode: details
Law & Order: SVU Season 7, Episode 10 ("Storm") centered on three girls who'd been abducted from a Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans and brought to New York City. Two attempted to make a daring escape.
The eldest, Tasha, played by Palmer, took her younger siblings and ran away. And though one of the girls is then re-abducted, Tasha's able to help Detectives Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) find her kidnapper and rescue the missing girl.
When the episode premiered in November 2005, Palmer was only 12 years old, but she gave a grounded and subtle performance that clearly indicated her star power.
RELATED: Keke Palmer's Son Is Too Cute for Words Wearing a Fancy Little Tux
"Storm's" wild twist
SVU stories almost always take a turn, but "Storm" went in a highly unexpected direction. Spoilers ahead.
With a reporter (Matthew Settle) hot on the trail (and causing problems), the department pretended that Tasha was comatose to get information from the public. The gambit worked, and the detectives caught their pedophile. But what they discovered was far outside their usual purview: anthrax. The perp was dead and the CDC got called in, as the anthrax was weaponized and became a national security threat. Then, federal agents took the girls, the body, and everything related to the case. Wild!
Watch SVU Season 7, Episode 10 (and all other SVU episodes) on Peacock now.
Keke Palmer's TV and film career
In the almost-20 years since "Storm" aired, Palmer has become a major star thanks to her singing, acting, hosting and comedy skills. Palmer’s breakout role came a year after her SVU episode in the 2006 hit film Akeelah and the Bee.
“Keke Palmer is one of the most talented human beings I’ve ever met,” Queen Latifah told Time in 2022. “Watching Keke evolve as a young woman has been a joy. She is the epitome of grace, poise, and honesty.”
RELATED: Keke Palmer's Baby Son Clapping After Hearing Her Sing Is Maximum Cuteness
On January 7, 2024, Palmer won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Game Show for her work on Password, making her the first woman to win the award since 2009, and the first Black woman to be nominated and win in the category.
“Wow. That is so exciting thank you so much. I’m really just so thankful, I’m almost speechless. I want to thank the people who allowed this to happen, thank you to Jimmy Fallon, thank to NBC,” she said during her acceptance speech (per Deadline).
