In September of last year, less than three months after the release of Baz Luhrmann’s critically lauded and crowd-pleasing smash hit, Elvis, it was announced that soon enough there was going to be another Elvis in town. And, crucially, another Priscilla.
Baz Luhrmann’s iteration of Elvis’s come-up may have been well received by the Presley family, including Priscilla Presley herself, but the role of Priscilla in his film was a minor one.
Now, in 2023, the tables are turning. Cult director Sofia Coppola is focusing her lens on Elvis’ bride, with help from her own 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me, of which Coppola is rumoured to have bought the rights.
While the film is slated for an October release, its leads were cast nearly a year ago, all while Austin Butler was still on the awards circuit, raking in praise for his effort as the rock and roll legend. It caused a slight kerfuffle - Butler’s Elvis and Olivia DeJonge’s Priscilla were both met with widespread acclaim and Butler took home nine awards in total for his performance - but as the Elvis hype died down, space was made for Priscilla.
And now we’ve seen her for the first time. Well, this version of her at least. The teaser dropped yesterday and immediately garnered rabid attention as fans squinted at newcomer Cailee Spaeny’s application of Priscilla’s trademark eyeliner and frantically googled “how tall was Elvis” to see if he really matches up to Jacob Elordi’s towering height of 6 ft 5.
But who is our new Priscilla, Cailee Spaeny, and what did she do to catch Coppola’s eye? Here’s everything you need to know.
A midwest theatre girl with a big family
Cailee Spaeny was born to a big family in the city of Springfield, southwestern Missouri, which she describes as meaning “lots of hand-me-down clothes and shopping at second-hand stores and always trying to save money.”
Spaeny started acting as a teen through her homeschool theatre group, and soon after she joined her local theatre, Springfield Little Theatre, for classes and productions. “I was there probably six days a week just taking dance classes, vocal lessons, acting classes,” Spaeny told 417 magazine in 2018.
Then, each summer, she would get in the minivan with her mum, drive 25 hours across the country and try her luck at castings in Los Angeles. “I was begging my mom to take me,” Spaeny says of this time, “there were times my mom didn’t know if we could afford going out there, but she didn’t want to tell me. She was praying every night, ‘Please let something happen.’”
Spaeny describes her local theatre group as extremely hard working and credits it for much of her current success. “No one gave me the easy way out in Springfield,” she told 417 magazine, even though people think of it as a smaller town. In LA, you say you did local theatre and they’re like ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ and I’m telling them, ‘No, this was real.’”
Spaeny struggled initially to break into the acting scene because of her place in the midwest, and it wasn’t just her who felt the squeeze. “I think a lot about my friends who wanted to pursue acting but got discouraged because it is incredibly expensive to go to L.A,” she told Glass Magazine in 2021. “If anybody gets to hear my story in the Midwest, I hope they find a sense of hope and keep chasing what they love.”
Spaeny had a very busy 2018
When Spaeny was 18, she heard about a casting opportunity for the Pacific Rim sequel, so she submitted a self tape in the hope it might get seen. "I went full out for that audition,” she recalls, “I put dirt all over my face, I was in a hooded jacket, and there was no air conditioning in the house, so I was actually sweating. I used remote controls [to simulate] buttons on the machines, I actually slammed myself down on the ground while Jonna, my acting coach, had her phone over me trying to get the best angles while reading me other lines.”
Spaeny landed the role and was carted off to shoot on location in Australia with co-stars John Boyega and Scott Eastwood. When the film dropped in 2018, Spaeny’s performance was such a success (even if the movie wasn’t exactly a hit with the critics) that she went from having one on-screen acting credit to booking four films in one week, one of which she eventually had to turn down because of scheduling conflicts. The big break had arrived and Spaeny had no choice but to hop on board.
But there were times when it all felt like too much. “I was 18 when I got my first role,” she told Glass Magazine, “and now I would say I could have waited a couple more years. But movies are my home.”
Then television came calling
Spaeny’s sudden success meant she could finally relocate to LA, though she chose to live in the less-glitzy area of the Valley because it felt the most “normal” to her. “You can walk down the street, go to the grocery store and kids are playing in their yards,” she told 417 magazine in 2018. “I love walking. I used to just walk if I had two auditions during the day, and I had three hours between them, I’d just walk to them.”
She was busy filming all the projects she’s signed up to at one, including Bad Times at El Royale alongside Chris Hemsworth and Jon Hamm, and On The Basis of Sex, the 2019 Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic led by Felicity Jones.
The hype quietened down slightly in 2020, where projects were fewer and further between thanks to covid, but then came the TV show of 2021: Mare of Easttown. Spaeny signed on to play key character Erin McMenamin, whose death kickstarts the events of the series and pushes frazzled detective Mare Sheehan, played by Kate Winslet, to the edge.
Her performance was well received, with Decider even calling her “the most sympathetic murder victim since Laura Palmer,” which is a very strange way of saying that she’s convincing but - she’s convincing. The role solidified Spaeny’s hype and made her more of a household name than ever before - she even started getting hugs from strangers in public, which was a new development.
Becoming Priscilla Presley
Spaeny was cast as Priscilla in September 2022 and has done zero press since the news broke. Luckily for us, Sofia Coppola has. Explaining Spaeny’s casting to Vogue, she said a lot of it was due to Spaeny’s youthfulness. “The character goes from the age of 15 to 27 over the course of the film so she had to be able to act and age across a big span of time,” Coppola said. “It was really important for me to have the same actress playing Priscilla at those different stages of her life, and I think Cailee can pull it off. She’s such a strong actress and she also looks very young.” Coppola also compared Priscilla to Marie Antoinette, who was the subject of her 2006 film starring Kirsten Dunst.
As for Spaeny’s choice to become Priscilla, we can only infer from previous interviews why she took the role (other than the fact it’s massive and Coppola is one of the most famous female directors in the business). She’s consistently said that she naturally gravitates towards roles which don’t reflect her, so she might not have a natural Priscilla-ness about her.
“One of my goals is whatever I’ve done last, I want to do the exact opposite for my next role, I want to keep challenging and pushing myself,” Spaeny told Glass Magazine. “I actually feel a sense of relief when I play a character that’s so far from who I am because I think once it starts bleeding into Cailee, it gets a little muddy for me.
“Whenever I play a character that has different costumes or the way they hold themselves is completely different, just seeking out those subtleties, it’s easier for me to find a path into the character’s world.” And if there’s one thing for sure with Priscilla, it’s that there will be costumes galore. Good luck Cailee Spaeny, those are some big eyeliner wings to fill.
