Kexec into new kernel, but I can't access the initramfs prompt!

I used kexec to successfully load my kernel, but it's just printing dmesg lines. How do I get out of this to drop into the initramfs prompt? Ctrl-Alt-F2 just loads a black screen and ctrl-c does nothing. Here is my kexec commandline: kexec -l $kernel --initrd=$initrd --command-line="root=UUID=... acpi=off ro text earlyshell debug showerr debuginitrd" earlyshell should provide me access to a shell, but it doesn't. Without that commandline, I just end up in a scripting loop that I can't break out of even with ctrl-c.