Priscilla Presley Shares Her Thoughts on Sofia Coppola's 'Priscilla'
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Just forget the tiny fact that her Zoom screen name is “P. Beaulieu.” There’s no mistaking that the woman with pin-straight dark-red hair and porcelain skin sitting in front of her computer screen inside her sunny L.A. home is one Priscilla Presley.
Even at age 78, Presley exudes a youthful softness. On a Monday evening in September, she speaks with a delicate touch about both the rescue dogs sitting at her feet, as well as her grandchildren. And when the subject turns to the man who’s loomed largest in her life—Elvis Presley, her partner of 14 years and husband of six—it’s obvious she still loves him tender.
“I never looked at him as being Elvis Presley,” she says. “I looked at him as being my husband and the father of my child. I loved being a wife. I loved babying him. I loved taking care of him. I didn’t see it any other way.”
Now it’s finally time for people to see her.
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The dreamy drama Priscilla (in theaters Nov. 3) focuses on young Presley (Cailee Spaeny) as she meets, marries and reluctantly leaves the music icon (Jacob Elordi)—all before her 30th birthday. Instead of set pieces featuring the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll sweating in those rhinestone suits onstage in Las Vegas, Oscar-winning writer and director Sofia Coppola gives her audiences close-ups of false eyelashes and nail polish bottles and pearl-handled revolvers color-coordinated with ‘60s-style mod dresses. Elvis’s own music is swapped out for the likes of Dolly Parton and The Ramones.
Coppola—the 52-year-old daughter of The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola whose films like Lost in Translation, The Beguiled and Marie Antoinette specialize in girls finding their identities—was inspired to adapt Presley’s tale after poring over her 1985 bestselling memoir, Elvis and Me, mid-pandemic.
“I think Priscilla has this great mystique about her, so it was fascinating to get a peek into her experiences,” Coppola says. “I was really surprised by some of the details. They were so relatable and personal. She showed the ups and downs of the relationship, and then there’s this great love story at its center.”
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When Coppola approached Presley to get her blessing, the star gave the green light (“I was honored”) and signed on as an executive producer. “Was I concerned? Yeah, I was concerned because, you know, it is my life and I lived it,” Presley says. “But to have an artist like Sofia take on the challenge of exposing and exploring my life in a beautiful way, I have to say, I was really touched. And I was really impressed by how it turned out.”
The pair, in fact, are doing this joint Zoom interview a few weeks after Priscilla made its well-received world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. “It’s a film about yourself and you’re watching it with an audience so you’re hoping and praying and thinking Gosh, I hope it all goes well,” Presley says. “So I was thrilled so many people were there, and that there was a standing ovation.” Seconds Coppola, “It was an unforgettable moment. But people feel so close to Priscilla’s family because they grew up knowing them. That’s why we had a big responsibility to get her story told.”
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A Teen in Love
It does seem too surreal to be true. In 1959, introverted 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu was living with her mom, Anna, and her dad, James, on a U.S. Army base in West Germany and filling her free time daydreaming about . . . horses. “I used to draw horses and I had statues of horses and I wanted to one day marry someone who loved horses and live on a ranch,” she says.
Then everything changed. As seen in the film, she ended up being invited to a party located at the home of Elvis Presley—the pop idol taking a break from chart-toppers to serve in the Army. Despite a 10-year age gap, the two immediately started talking and bonding. One conversation led to another. Which led to another. Which led to date nights and chaste kisses.
“I became so close with him because he trusted me so much,” she says. “He asked me one time, ‘Who did you tell at school?’ and I said, ‘I haven’t told anybody. It’s private.’ I’m not someone who brags and talks about this person and that person. I value friendship and other people’s wishes. And I could tell that he was so private in Germany. He had very few friends; just his Army buddies.”
Even after Elvis returned home to Memphis, the two stayed in touch via late-night, long-distance phone calls. “A lot of times we could get away with it because, thank God, my parents were sound sleepers,” she says.
By the time Priscilla was 17, the two were so serious that Elvis insisted that she move to his Graceland estate full-time. If that biographical nugget seems shocking now, imagine how her parents felt back in the early ‘60s. “They were a nervous wreck,” she says. “My mother was so tormented. My father was beside himself. I was so torn because of it.” How did she close the deal? “I said, ‘If you don’t let me go, I will find a way to go.’ And they knew I meant it.”
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Coppola, the mom of two teen girls, says that line of dialogue was essential to her screenplay: “Of course you think What parent would ever let their kid go in that situation? But as a mom, I could really put myself on both sides. I knew it must have been hard for everyone, and I tried to be sensitive to that.”
With a promise to her father that she would earn her high school diploma, Priscilla uprooted to Graceland. She still remembers walking through the door for the first time—“I’d never seen a home so big”—and being greeted by Elvis’s paternal grandma, Minnie Mae “Dodger” Hood. “Suddenly I was sitting there with her and she was telling stories about Elvis when he was younger and about his mother [Gladys, who died in 1958] and how protective she was of him.” She adds that the interior was decked out in red in honor of the Christmas season.
True to her word, Priscilla finished up her senior year as her relationship with Elvis intensified. “This was the most surprising thing to me,” Coppola adds. “I knew what it was like to be the new kid at school because we traveled for my dad’s work but this was Priscilla dating Elvis at the height of his popularity! What a ride.”
From Priscilla’s perspective, the pressure to fulfill her vow to her dad led to some desperate (albeit inspired) measures. In Priscilla, Presley panics during an exam and bribes the girl next to her with a Graceland invite if she shares her answers. That scene really went down in a math class. “I had to pass or else I would be sent home,” she says. “I got an A and my father was so proud of me. But I felt guilty.”
Priscilla graduated from Immaculate Conception High School in 1963. She and Elvis wed four years later. Daughter Lisa Marie arrived in 1968.
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Feeling Blue
Though Presley fulfilled every one of her teenage wishes right down to the horses she rode on the Graceland grounds, she longed for more. Specifically, more time with her husband.
Because Elvis was constantly in L.A. filming movies at the behest of his manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, she was often left on her own. “You know, it was really lonely,” she says. “I would count the days until he would come back. He’d call me at five o’clock every day and I wouldn’t go anywhere until I got that call. I spent a lot of time thinking.”
Those thoughts, she admits, were often consumed by what—and, well, who—her husband was doing away from home. “I’m in a bedroom in Graceland with a 68-year-old woman [Elvis’ grandma] and in my head, I’m going, Oh my God, what’s going on, is there another girl who’s going to take my place?” she says.
When Elvis did return home, he could be short and temperamental. To maintain the peace, Presley says she tried hard to balance her roles as a wife and mom. During the day, she doted on her young child. (“I was a real mom who took care of her.”) At night, a nanny arrived on duty so she could join her husband and his buddies.
“We’d fill a table of ten and I would be the only woman, and the youngest,” she says. “It was a privilege, but I wanted to fit in badly. I hung out. I laughed at their jokes and kept up with the conversation. And as a wife, I made sure his food was hot. I just wanted to please him. It’s like I was living two lives.” (Says Coppola, “There was so much expectation on you to be everything.”)
In 1972, Presley reached her breaking point. In Priscilla, the wife and mother who walked into Graceland as a meek high schooler confidently strolls out as an independent woman. (The divorce was finalized in 1973; he died of cardiac arrest in 1977). “In my mind, I was ending the film as she starts this new chapter in her life,” Coppola says. “It’s an adulthood.”
But Presley wants to underline a crucial point. “I didn’t leave Elvis because I didn’t love him anymore,” she says. “I couldn’t take it. There were girls around waiting for him. It was so hard.”
Ultimately, she says simply, “I just had to find myself.”
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Living Solo
Like so many others before her, Presley struck out to L.A. and became an actress. The big asterisk is that she had no interest in stardom.
“I took acting classes to get me out of my shell,” she says. “I had a teacher and he knew this about me and he would have me on a stage skipping and dancing in a theater filled with people. I was scared to death because I was quite shy and intimidated by people.”
Not even Coppola knew that Presley turned down a role in the original Charlie’s Angels TV series. “I didn’t want to be known as one of the girls that, you know, wore low-cut dresses and short-shorts,” she says.
As a fan of the dishy nighttime soap Dallas, she did happily agree to join the cast in 1983 in the role of Jenna Wade Krebbs, and stayed on through 1988. She also memorably played the slightly dim love interest of hapless Detective Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) in the raucous 1988 comedy The Naked Gun. “I read it and went Oh my God, this is so much fun!” she recalls. “Then I went to the audition and I got it. I never thought I would because I’m not a comedian. But it seemed to fit.” She reprised her part for the movie’s two sequels.
She phased out her acting career in the 1990s to focus on her top priority: Elvis’s legacy. “Years ago, there was an accountant who told me that we were running out of money,’” she says. “I had to do something to help. That was at the beginning of the opening of Graceland.” The Graceland museum now grosses close to $10 million annually per Forbes, while the artist’s estate is worth close to $500 million.
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Meanwhile, Presley still lives in L.A. and says she enjoys her low-key lifestyle with her son, musician Navarone Garibaldi, 36, granddaughter, Daisy Jones & The Six actress Riley Keough, 34, and twin 14-year-old grandkids Harper and Finley. She’s also a great- grandma to Keough’s baby daughter, Tupelo. (Daughter Lisa Marie died suddenly in January at age 54). “I hang out with my son and Riley and the twins,” she says. “It’s quiet, and I like it. And, of course, I have Graceland.”
As for Elvis? Anyone who watches Priscilla will glean that in 2023, the King still rocks her world. “Protecting his reputation and his life,” she says, “has always been very important to me."
Watch Priscilla in theaters starting Nov. 3.
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