Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi attended the North American premiere of Sofia Coppola‘s “Priscilla” at the New York Film Festival on Friday night, where they sat down for a post-screening Q&A to discuss the biographical drama.
“I got really lucky to actually sit down with Priscilla herself and ask her all the questions I wanted to,” Spaeny explained to the audience, adding that their conversation helped her “know where I was trying to go and what I wanted to say throughout those years playing her.”
The production was completed on a tight deadline of 30 days, with producer Youree Henley emphasizing the team’s doubts that they could “make this in less than 35 days.”
Spaeny said the hair, makeup and costumes acted like her “anchor of where I was in the storylines.” “We shot it in 30 days and also out of order, so I’d be pregnant in the morning, and then after lunch, I’d be 14 years old,” she said with a laugh.
The biographical drama is based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” which details personal accounts of her relationship with Elvis Presley. “Priscilla” chronicles the Presley’s tumultuous relationship, from the couple first meeting in Bad Nauheim, Germany, in 1959 to their eventual divorce.
“I think the first thing was disabling the mythology and attempting to play [Elvis] as a human being and a person who was given a certain set of circumstances,” Elordi said of his preparation in portraying the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. “So the whole thing the whole time was just trying to walk the tightrope between being arguably one of the most famous people in the world and a human being at the same time, and being honest with the love.”
At the screening, Spaeny read a statement on behalf of director-writer Sofia Coppola, who missed the “Priscilla” premiere to be with her mother Eleanor.
“Thank you for coming and thank you to Dennis Lim and the New York Film Festival. I’m so proud to have our film here as their Centerpiece. I’m sorry to not be there, but I am with my mother, to whom this film is dedicated,” Coppola said in a statement. “I’m so thankful to our actors and the work of my great team who helped me shoot this in 30 days.”
Coppola concluded her statement by saying, “I hope you can celebrate all of our hard work tonight and our mutual love for independent cinema.”
“Priscilla” opens in theaters Nov. 3.
