Four months before her death in January, Lisa Marie Presley sent a couple of emails to Sofia Coppola asking her to revise the script for Priscilla, which opens widely on Friday. In one of her messages, she described the screenplay, which tells the story of Lisa Marie’s mom, Priscilla, as “shockingly vengeful and contemptuous,” according to Variety. She reportedly worried that a negative depiction of Elvis would widen the chasm between her and Priscilla and put unneeded pressure on Elvis’ grandchildren after the 2020 death of her son, Benjamin Keough.
As detailed in Elvis and Me, Priscilla’s 1985 memoir, Elvis began courting her when he was 24 and she was 14. The book details how he won her confidence and the confidence of her parents, eventually convincing her to travel with him and marry when she was old enough.
“My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative,” Lisa Marie wrote to Sofia in September 2022. “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?”
She also threatened to condemn the picture and her mother, an executive producer on the picture, 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,” Lisa Marie wrote.
Reps for Coppola, Priscilla, and Priscilla’s film studio, A24, did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s requests for comment.
Coppola sent her response to Lisa Marie as a comment on the subject to Variety. “I hope that when you see the final film you will feel differently,” she wrote, “and understand I’m taking great care in honoring your mother, while also presenting your father with sensitivity and complexity.”
An anonymous source told Variety that by the time principal photography for Priscilla began on Oct. 24, 2022, 10 pages from the script had been cut.
According to the publication, Lisa Marie’s main worry was that modern audiences might not understand what happened between her parents since it seemed like Elvis groomed the underage Priscilla. “I am worried that my mother isn’t seeing the nuance here or realizing the way in which Elvis will be perceived when this movie comes out,” Lisa Marie wrote. “I feel protective over my mother who has spent her whole life elevating my father’s legacy. I am worried she doesn’t understand the intentions behind this film or the outcome it will have.”
She also invoked Coppola’s family dynasty: “I would think of all people that you would understand how this would feel,” she continued. “Why are you coming for my Dad and my family?” Lisa Marie added that she didn’t want to have to explain to her teenage twins why the film was negative on the heels of Baz Luhrmann’s hagiographic Elvis.
Lisa Marie died in January of cardiac arrest. She was 54.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Coppola said she found it difficult squaring the public perception that Elvis groomed Priscilla with Priscilla’s account of the courtship, which she saw as more romantic. (Priscilla has made it clear that they did not have sex when she was 14). “I kept coming back to her perspective and her point of view,” Coppola said. “And I try not to be judgmental of any of the characters and really be as sympathetic as I can to each of them. And I’m really focused on her perspective, but even with the parents, you’re like, ‘How can anybody let their kid go live with Elvis that young?’… I feel it’s only my job to show what her experience is like, and I think you present things to an audience for them to think about and make their own decisions.”
Coppola also told Rolling Stone that it was not her intention to besmirch Elvis’ legacy, hinting that someone — whom she would not name — tried to get her to lighten to tone of the film. “I never want to, like, take someone down and disrespect them,” she said. “I think it’s sympathetic to see his struggles and the human side, but definitely there’s so much folklore of him as this god. There was someone that was trying to get me to take out all the dark stuff… But I really wanted the ups and downs. You can’t have a complex relationship with just the good side.”
