Lisa Marie Presley was ready to go against her mother to protect her father’s legacy in a series of heartbreaking and private emails that have been leaked to the media after her passing.
Variety obtained personal messages written by Lisa Marie Presley to filmmaker Sofia Coppola as she was working on the movie Priscilla.
The movie is based on Priscilla Presley‘s 1985 tell-all memoir entitled Elvis and Me, which reveals the good, the bad, and the ugly about her marriage to music legend Elvis Presley and her complex relationship with daughter Lisa Marie Presley.
Lisa Marie Presley died in January 2023. Four months before her death, she penned the emails to Oscar-winning director Sofia Coppola explaining why she needed to cancel the project.
Lisa Marie Presley confessed that she was upset and pained by the portrayal of Elvis Presley in the film.
She said it was a “shockingly vengeful” portrait of her father. The late music icon who was tagged as a predator, a monster, and a man who groomed a child to become his wife.
The book and movie sparked a debate about Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley’s fairy tale and historical romance; the pair met in Germany in 1959, when Priscilla was only 14 years old and Elvis was 24 years old.
Lisa Marie Presley said not only would the biopic damage the image of who her father was, but it would open fresh wounds for his grandchildren, Riley Keough and twins Harper and Finley Lockwood — who are still mourning the sudden death of their brother, Benjamin Keough, who died in 2020 by suicide.
In September 2022, Lisa Marie Presley wrote her first email, saying: “My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative. As his daughter, I don’t read this and don’t see any of my father in this character. I don’t read this and see my mother’s perspective on my father. I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective, and I don’t understand why?”
Four hours later, Lisa Marie Presley threatened Sofia Coppola by saying that she would go public and stand against her mother and the production of the film to protect her father and children.
She added: “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.”
According to Variety, Coppola had this response for the concerned and angry daughter: “I hope that when you see the final film, you will feel differently and understand that I’m taking great care to honor your mother while also presenting your father with sensitivity and complexity.”
In a new interview with Deadline, Coppola said she was blindsided by the emails. She confessed: “I was stunned to hear that a couple of weeks before shooting. I felt like it was something between the family that I had no idea about. I felt like it was between them [Lisa Marie and her mother, Priscilla]. And of course, I didn’t want to do anything that was going to make anyone uncomfortable. The book had been out for decades by then.”
She added: “I was really surprised, and I wish she had a chance to see it because I don’t think Elvis comes off badly. I admire him, and I wanted to show the private side, but it is Priscilla’s story. I definitely always meant to be sensitive, and I wasn’t trying to take him down in a way that she would be worried about.”
When asked if she made changes to appease Lisa Marie Presley, Sofia Coppola bluntly said: “No, because I had always wanted to be sensitive and show how I interpreted Priscilla talking about him, which was not damning at all. I felt like I was focused on bringing her story to light. I can understand that there’s a business there and a brand, but I just didn’t expect to find myself… Furthermore, I would never want to intrude on a family. Additionally, I was always planning to approach it with sensitivity because that’s just the way I do things.”
Variety claims that the filmmaker “toned down some elements of the book regarding the couple’s courtship that would have been shocking to contemporary audiences.”
About 10 pages from the original script were removed.
