“Priscilla” star Cailee Spaeny doesn’t want to label Elvis Presley’s relationship with Priscilla Presley as grooming despite their infamous age difference.
“I think what we were trying to do [with the movie] is put a human story that is nuanced and complicated on screen,” the actress, 25, told Pvnew exclusively at the 2023 Gotham Awards last Monday.
“And I think, you know, it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of space for those complicated stories and to get to tell that through Priscilla’s life,” she added.
Priscilla was just 14 when she met a 24-year-old Elvis in 1959 while he was stationed in Germany.
The couple embarked on a relationship that saw Priscilla move to Elvis’ Graceland estate in 1963 while still in high school. They wed in 1967, weeks before her 22nd birthday, and she gave birth to their only child, Lisa Marie Presley, in 1968.
Spaeny told us that bringing the polarizing relationship to the big screen “was exciting” so that viewers could “decide how they feel about it” themselves.
“Priscilla,” based on the 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” stars Jacob Elordi as Elvis and Spaeny as Priscilla. Sofia Coppola wrote, directed and produced it.
The film has not been without controversy, as private emails from Lisa Marie to Coppola leaked ahead of its Nov. 3 wide release.
In the messages, the “Lights Out” singer pleaded with the filmmaker to reconsider her portrayal of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
“My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative,” she wrote. “As his daughter, I don’t read this and see any of my father in this character. I don’t read this and see my mother’s perspective of my father. I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective and I don’t understand why?”
Lisa Marie also threatened to voice her feelings publicly.
“I will be forced to be in a position where I will have to openly say how I feel about the film and go against you, my mother and this film publicly,” she wrote.
Lisa Marie penned the emails just four months before she died of cardiac arrest in January at age 54.
Spaeny told Pvnew that her “only point of contact” while making the movie was Priscilla, 78, and that she made “sure that she felt honor[ed] and that I asked her the right questions and that she felt safe during that process.”
