Priscilla Presley fought back tears as she discussed a new film about her life and relationship with Elvis.
Speaking at a press conference in Venice hours before the premiere of Priscilla, directed by Sofia Coppola, she opened up about meeting him when she was just 14 years old.
“It was very difficult for my parents to understand that Elvis would be so interested in me and why. I really do think it was because I was more of a listener,” she said. “Elvis would pour his heart out to me in every way in Germany: his fears, his hopes, the loss of his mother, which he never ever got over. And I was the person who really sat there to listen and to comfort him. That was really our connection.”
She added: “Even though I was 14, I was actually a little bit older in life – not in numbers. That was the attraction. People think: ‘Oh, it was sex.’ No, it wasn’t. I never had sex with him. He was very kind, very soft, very loving, but he also respected the fact I was only 14 years old. We were more in line in thought, and that was our relationship.”
The 78-year-old also clarified that when she left Presley years later, “it wasn’t because I didn’t love him – he was the love of my life. It was the lifestyle that was so difficult for me … We had our daughter and I made sure that he saw her all the time. It was like we never left each other. I want to make that clear.”
She said it was “very difficult to watch a film about you and your life and about your love”, but paid tribute to Coppola’s work and research. “And I really put everything out for her that I could,” she said.
The film is based on the 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, co-authored by Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon. The story begins when the teenage Priscilla Beaulieu (played by Cailee Spaeny) met 24-year-old Elvis (Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi) while he was serving in the army and stationed in Germany.
The film is open in depicting Elvis’s grooming of Priscilla, as well as his controlling behaviour towards her. Coppola said she was drawn to the project because she was “so struck with how the setting is so unusual, but [Priscilla] goes through all of the things that all girls go through growing up into womanhood – her first kiss and becoming a mother – all of these moments I could relate to, but in this very unusual setting that we’re so curious to know.”
The director, Spaeny and Elordi were able to attend the festival after the film received a strike waiver from Sag-Aftra.
