Audiences first got a glimpse of the multihyphenate actress and entertainer Keke Palmer and the multiplatinum, Grammy-winning artist SZA together on “Saturday Night Live” in 2022. Now they are box office queens with their film “One of Them Days” defying predictions to become the No. 1 comedy in the country, coming in second only to Disney’s latest “Lion King” offering, “Mufasa” from Barry Jenkins, during the four-day MLK holiday weekend.
Inviting comparisons to the 1995 classic buddy comedy, “Friday,” “One of Them Days,” written by Syreeta Singleton, follows two best friends and roommates — Palmer’s straight-laced Dreux and SZA’s free-spirited Alyssa — as they race against the clock to raise their rent money or be kicked out on the sidewalk with all their belongings.
Palmer, who produced the film with Issa Rae, told NBC News that she signed on to the film because “it felt familiar to me — a story about two girls growing up in an L.A. neighborhood trying to figure out how to make rent, but with all the hijinks and also all the lessons they learned along the way. It reminded me of the kind of films that I watched growing up about friendship, usually starring two guys, though.”
Palmer said she jumped at the chance to act in and produce a movie that “centered women in a way that I love,” while paying homage to other films in the genre like “Let’s Do It Again” with Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby, “Bad Boys” with Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, and plenty of others.
Taking on a role behind the camera for a feature film stretched Palmer, who was last seen on the big screen in “Nope,” from writer and director Jordan Peele. “I think the challenge was staying in it, because it took a long time to do,” she explained.
The process for “One of Them Days” began as Palmer was co-hosting “Good Morning America’s” third hour, in 2019 and 2020. In the meantime, the actress, Emmy-winning “Password” host, podcaster and author had to keep focused on her role as Dreux. She said she had to avoid “letting myself get lost with all the different kinds of hoops you have to go through when you’re putting a project together and wanting to get it right for the story you’re telling, but also wanting to make sure that the studio is happy,” she said. “It was a great lesson in collaboration.”
As funny as this film is, with comedians Katt Williams, Janelle James, Lil Rel Howery and Gabrielle Dennis lending their talents, Lawrence Lamont’s directorial debut delivers more than laughs. Instead, “One of Them Days” uses humor to shed light on much bigger issues.
“Everybody’s broke right now. The economy is struggling,” said Rae, who is best known for her HBO series “Insecure.” “It’s a reflection of our hustle culture, how hard it is to make ends meet, and also finding ways to laugh at the pain.”
Social commentary is an element Palmer insists people often miss in “Friday,” which is one of their film’s main inspirations. “We’re like ‘Oh, “Friday’ is so funny,’ but at the core of it, it was about gun violence,” she noted. “It was about ‘stop killing each other and shooting each other; if you want to fight, duke it out in the street, put the guns down.’ It was about real messages.”
“With this movie, it was the same thing,” she added. “’Yeah O.K., we got friendship during hijinks and people are crazy, but it’s like, ‘Wait a minute, there is a cycle of poverty here and actually it is really hard to work your way up, credit is a motherf—-er, oh s—, I actually don’t know how to pay back these student loans, oh wait a minute, gentrification, my city is edging me out — how do I maintain when I’m in this cycle that I can’t get out of?’”
“One of Them Days” also reaches back to Black film history beyond “Friday,” Palmer said. The music, she said, may remind viewers a bit of Blaxploitation era films, playing with satire while also speaking to the issues that are going on in the community.”
“One of Them Days,” she said, addresses today’s hard-hitting issues of gentrification, systemic racism and predatory lending while evoking “hope, pride and understanding.”
