She explains what went wrong in her marriage with Elvis.
Anytime a cultural icon from the last several decades pops up in the news, the Katie Couric Media team asks ourselves a familiar question: Has Katie spoken to them? The answer is usually yes — and looking back is always utterly fascinating.
One of the big names she’s interviewed who’s been on everyone’s lips lately is Priscilla Presley, the former wife of rock legend Elvis Presley. Her life gets the big-screen treatment with Priscilla, the latest film from acclaimed director Sofia Coppola, which is winning rave reviews for its thoughtful portrait of a teenage girl who was swept up into a fast life that could be described as a dream or a nightmare, depending on the day. Cailee Spaeny stars as Priscilla, and she’s got incredible chemistry with Jacob Elordi, who plays Elvis — together, they beautifully capture a complicated relationship through a lens we haven’t seen before.
Elvis has always taken center stage in the cultural consciousness, including in the 2022 biopic Elvis, which put his marriage into the background. But this new movie is based on Elvis and Me, the memoir Priscilla wrote in 1985, and it spotlights her own experience, which included plenty of hardship and loneliness to go along with all the big romantic gestures that came during happier times.
Those themes were certainly evident back in 2002, when Katie had an in-depth conversation with Priscilla about her life with Elvis, which you can watch below. They touch on many of the threads that play out in Coppola’s film, like Elvis’s micromanagement of Priscilla’s appearance. He insisted she dye her hair black and tease it into a bouffant, creating what she described to Katie as “a little bad girl look.” It often felt “quite glamorous” — but Elvis could be picky, too.
“At times he could be very critical. He didn’t like prints on me. He didn’t like stripes. He didn’t like boldness. He said I was petite, and [those styles] were taking away from my looks,” Priscilla said in 2002. “But as controlling as he was, he was very, very charming.”
While weathering the ups and downs of their relationship, the couple had a daughter, Lisa Marie, who tragically died at the beginning of 2023. But as Elvis faced a stalling career and a drug addiction in the 1970s, it was ultimately the mother’s instinct to protect her child that led Priscilla to leave the marriage, she told Katie.
“His career was going down again, and he was tired of the songs. He was tired of the routine. There was a point where he just kind of gave up. He couldn’t face being 40, and he resorted to stimulants. There was a dark side there, a very dark side,” Priscilla said. “It was scary because I also had a daughter to raise, and it was a lifestyle that really wasn’t conducive to a family.”
So how did Priscilla find the courage to leave? You’ll see it play out in Coppola’s film, but you can hear about it now — along with much, much more about being married to the King — in Katie’s flashback interview below.
