Priscilla, written and directed by Sofia Coppola, from the 1985 memoir Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley, premiered at the 80th Venice film festival, where the film’s star Cailee Speany won the Volpi Cup as best actress. Elvis is played by Jacob Elordi, the Australian actor also starring in Saltburn, written and directed by Emerald Fennell, that premiered at the Rome Film Festival. They all answered questions at a Press Conference on September 4, as did Priscilla Presley herself.
We saw Sofia Coppola interviewed in person on October 15, after the American Cinemathèque screening of Priscilla at the Aero in Santa Monica, and on zoom with Cailee Speany on October 30.
Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi © Philippe Le Sourd-A24
Coppola: “As I was reading Priscilla Presley’s memoir, I never expected to get so involved, and I was surprised because I realized how little I knew about her. I was really moved by her story and connected to the way she described everything she went through, from being a girl to an independent woman, after such an unusual circumstance. I was really happy to have access to Priscilla and for her to be open to reliving that era. She talked about it in such vivid detail and gave me so much insight.”
Priscilla was a 14-year-old teenager when she met Elvis who was 24, in 1959 while he was stationed in Germany during his military service. In 1962 he invited her to visit him at Graceland, his residence in Memphis, Tennessee, then obtained her parents’ permission to let her finish school at a local Catholic institution.
Coppola: “I had no idea that she was in high school while living at Graceland. In the book she talks about partying all night with Elvis, and having to go to school the next morning, thinking how could she explain to the nuns that she had been up all night trying to be the fun girlfriend, picking out which handgun would go with which glittery dress. So I show these crazy contrasts in her life.”
Speany: “I grew up in an Elvis-loving family going to visit Graceland, so he was very much part of my childhood, and obviously I knew that Priscilla went with Elvis, but I didn’t know her side of the story. I was also growing up with Sofia’s films, and the way she tapped into young female stories, which I find so rare in films these days, felt like she always finds a true depiction of teenage girls. So I was excited to tell this story, because it hadn’t been told before, and with this filmmaker.”
Coppola: “For me, at this stage in my life, I felt like I’ve had experience in making films and this one relates to the idea of finding one’s identity, which always appeals to me. Also I’m at point of my life where I’m a mother of teenage girls (Romy, 16, and Cosima, 13, with husband Thomas Mars), so I could see the story from both perspectives, thinking, ‘how could Priscilla’s parents let her go live in Graceland?’ I had a different perspective that now I could put into the story on different levels.”
Speany: “The first step was reading the script along with the book, really diving into that and writing out the biggest questions that I had, then meeting with Priscilla herself trying to go through that chapter of her life. I always wanted her to feel comfortable, never like I was interviewing her, but for things to come up naturally; then she would go into these specific memories that she had with Elvis and talked about it in detail. I was also taking in the presence of this woman who’d lived this life, and her eyes would sparkle again talking about certain moments or she’d laugh at an inside joke that they had. That’s what I wanted to try to absorb when I was around her. She’s such a fascinating woman, very graceful and soft spoken in the way that she holds herself, but also has this fierceness about her. She was never a doormat or a victim, so it was really important for me to try and show her strength underneath all her delicate femininity. I think all of us women can relate to her, from being a young girl to finding her voice and her autonomy.”
Coppola: “I’m always interested in the fantasy of what looks ideal and then the reality of that. It looked like such a fairy tale on the outside, and then to hear the struggles that she went through, it’s not at all what you expect, that she had this ideal life, but there were the highs and the lows. There’s this idea in our culture that fame and wealth will make you happy, but the reality is that they come with a whole other set of baggage.”
Jacob Elordi shows a different aspect of Elvis Presley than the critically acclaimed performance by Austin Butler in Elvis by Baz Lurhmann, which earned him a Golden Globe as best actor.
Coppola: “For me it was really important to go by the perspective that Priscilla writes about in her book, showing him as a flawed human being. Elvis is such a godlike figure in our culture and history, but she talks about what he was like behind closed doors. It was so interesting to show his incredible charm and his vulnerability, the dark side of this complex relationship.”
Priscilla and Elvis Presley married May 1, 1967 in Las Vegas, their daughter Lisa Marie was born February 1, 1968. They separated February 24, 1972, filed for divorce in 1973.
Coppola: “It seems so hard that Priscilla wasn’t allowed to invite friends home or to get a job, she lived a protected life. It was a time, for women of my mother’s generation, when you were expected to be completely fulfilled and satisfied with having a successful husband, a beautiful home and a child. ‘What more can you want?’ That was the sentiment of women of that era, and if they wanted some expression outside of that, it was a struggle. Priscilla was trying to find her way, and I was glad that she was able to get a life of her own outside of Elvis after all that. I was looking at what my mother (Eleanor Coppola, married to her father Francis Ford Coppola for 60 years) went through, then looking at my daughters, while being in between these generations that have changed so much, but in some ways still have a lot in common.”
P.S. If you read Italian, see attached the article I wrote for VOILA Magazine social media
