Actor Cailee Spaeny hasn't seen Baz Luhrmann's 2022 film "Elvis."
Spaeny tells TODAY.com she chose to avoid the biopic after landing the role of Priscilla Presley in "Priscilla," director Sofia Coppola's take on the relationship between Presley and the King of Rock 'N' Roll.
"When we were prepping the movie, 'Elvis' was coming out and I made a decision that my only resources were going to be Priscilla herself, the book, the script, Sofia, any footage that I could find online and that was it," she says.
Spaeny, 25, says she didn't want other portrayals of Presley in her mind as she was working on the film.
"Olivia DeJonge, who played Priscilla in 'Elvis', she's amazing. She's such a talented actress, but I knew if I had any of that in my head, it would influence me one way or the other," she says. "Whether I was consciously trying to do something opposite or I liked something that she did and I wanted to take it on, but I didn't want any of that."
"Priscilla" opened in theaters on Nov. 3, and Spaeny says she's now open to seeing "Elvis."
"But I think maybe now, I'll give it a couple of months," she says with a laugh. "Everyone loves that movie and I'd love to watch it."
Spaeny stars in the film alongside Jacob Elordi, is 6 foot 5 inches tall, while she's just over 5 feet tall. "I lie and say I'm 5 foot 1 but I don't even think I'm that," she says.
"It came with its own set of challenges," she says of their height difference. "We would have to make wooden runways that went through the whole set. Jacob and I would be doing a scene, and if you looked at what was happening at the bottom, I'm in super high heels and I'm also on a platform wooden runway. But we found our ways around that — he also got really good at leaning against walls."
Spaeny says once she found out Elordi was cast as Elvis, she immediately emailed him and wanted to befriend him. She shared more about their first emails on "The Kelly Clarkson Show."
"I was like, 'Do you want to go horseback riding?' because that's something Elvis and Priscilla loved to do. He was so game," she recalls. "It was so awkward. He's like, behind me riding a horse, and I'm like, 'So are you close with your family?' in this group horseback riding trip."
The pair's chemistry certainly developed and is apparent throughout the film, and Spaeny says her favorite scene to film was when Elvis and Priscilla took psychedelic drugs together.
"It was so improvised, basically they just put us in a room and (Coppola) sat in another room and was like, 'Just do whatever you want.' We started playing trippy music and the lights were on ... we basically were just giggling and crawling on the floor. At one point I went up to this ceramic tiger in the room and acted like it was telling me secrets," she says. "It was a silly day, but it was good to have some fun."
Spaeny clarifies the pair were sober while filming, though the conditions of filming had an effect: "I think we all probably felt a little high because we weren't sleeping and we shot the movie in 30 days. So by the point we were filming that scene, we had already lost our minds a bit."
The actor shares she was able to meet with Priscilla Presley herself before filming began, where she would share intimate memories of her former husband.
The scenes of Priscilla Presley at younger age, including when she met Elvis for the first time when she was 14, were easier for the actor to shoot, as she was able to draw on her own experiences of being in love at a young age, Spaeny says.
"The setting that she lives in is such as such a heightened world. It's a story we don't think we can connect to, but as I was reading her book, and I was playing the role, there's so many milestones that young women go through. One of those is falling in love," she says. "It's the best feeling in the world when you fall in love, especially at that age, and you'll do anything to hold on to that feeling."
"Sometimes you lose yourself along the way and you don't even realize it, then you look around and pick those pieces back up and try to come out on the other side seeing things more clearly," she continues. "I felt that there were a lot of relatable moments as I was prepping for the movie."
