Priscilla Presley opened up at a recent press conference at the Venice Film Festival when asked about what it felt like to watch Sofia Coppola's new biographical drama "Priscilla" about her relationship with singer Elvis Presley.
The two famously met in Germany when Priscilla Presley was just 14 years old.
Priscilla Presley, who was not actually part of the panel for the press conference, jumped in from the audience to respond to the question, Variety reports.
“It’s very difficult to sit and watch a film about you, about your life, about your love,” Priscilla Presley said, with Variety reporting her eyes welled with tears. “Sofia did an amazing job. She did her homework, we spoke a couple of times and I really put everything out for her that I could.”
Coppola’s film, which stars Cailee Spaeny in the title role and Jacob Elordi as Elvis Presley, documents their first meeting when Priscilla Presley was in the 9th grade and their subsequent relationship.
Interestingly, Priscilla Presley insisted at the press conference that Elvis did not take advantage of her as a young woman.
“It was very difficult for my parents to understand that Elvis would be so interested in me and why,” she said, according to Variety. “And I really do think because I was more of a listener. Elvis would pour his heart out to me in every way in Germany: his fears, his hopes, the loss of his mother — which he never, ever got over. And I was the person who really, really sat there to listen and to comfort him. That was really our connection. Even though I was 14, I was actually a little bit older in life — not in numbers. That was the attraction. People think, ‘Oh, it was sex.’ No, it wasn’t. I never had sex with him. He was very kind, very soft, very loving, but he also respected the fact I was only 14 years old. We were more in line in thought, and that was our relationship.”
Priscilla Presley has previously spoken about their relationship, even going as far as to write a book in 1985 titled "Elvis and Me."
In it, she expressly said that the two of them did have a sexual relationship. She said that they had engaged in other forms of "lovemaking" but did not have penetrative sex until marriage, when she was 21 years old.
"It would have been so easy for him. I was young, vulnerable, desperately in love, and he could have taken complete advantage of me," she wrote in her memoir about a time when she was 14. "But he quietly said, 'No. Someday we will, Priscilla, but not now. You’re just too young.'"
Later in her book, she explained that "instead of consummating our love in the usual way, he began teaching me other means of pleasing him.
"We had a strong connection, much of it sexual. The two of us created some exciting and wild times," she wrote, careful to emphasize at one point that she did not think the musician was "perverted or in any way harmful."
Later on in the book, however, she wrote that the King of Rock-n-Roll was a "master at manipulating people" who made her a "living doll to fashion as he pleased."
At the Venice Film Festival press conference, she said that their bond had been based on trust.
“I didn’t know why he put so much trust in me, but he did. And I never, ever, ever told anyone that I was seeing him, and that was another issue that he loved, is the fact that I never gave him up in any way. I never told anyone at school that I was seeing him," she said. "So, we built a relationship and then our relationship went on until I left. And it wasn’t because I didn’t love him — he was the love of my life. It was the lifestyle that was so difficult for me, and I think any woman can relate to that," she said. "But it didn’t mar our relationship, we still remained very close. And of course, we had our daughter, and I made sure that he saw her all the time. It was like we never left each other."
Elvis and Priscilla Presley's daughter and only child, Lisa Marie Presley, died following a medical emergency in January 2023 at the age of 54.
