Actress Riley Keough mentioned her mom’s demise in depth for the primary time in a sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey at her household’s Graceland residence in a particular that aired on CBS on Oct. 8, the identical day From Right here to the Nice Unknown, the posthumous memoir of Keough’s late mom, Lisa Marie Presley, the one little one of rock icon Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, went on sale. Keough completed the e book by listening to hours of tapes her mom had recorded for the e book earlier than she died on Jan. 12, 2023, from a cardiac arrest episode on the age of 54.
In An Oprah Special: The Presleys – Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley, Keough, the daughter of Lisa Marie and actor and musician Danny Keough, teared up listening to audio of her mom speak about her relationship with Michael Jackson, whom she was married to from 1994-1996.
“I can only speak to my experience with Michael and my experience was that he was only kind and loving to me and my family, and I saw them in a very seemingly happy, loving relationship,” she instructed Winfrey.
A lot of Lisa Marie’s life was stuffed with unhappy reminiscences, nonetheless, starting together with her father’s demise in 1977 when she was simply 9 years previous. Regardless of the sudden nature of Lisa Marie’s passing — she attended the Golden Globes simply two days prior in celebration of the 2022 biopic Elvis — Keough recalled worrying about her mom’s well being within the days prior.
“The last three weeks that she was alive I was with her a few times that I felt worried,” she stated. “I think there was always sort of an undertone for me because of this feeling that I was on borrowed time with her. But there were a couple interactions with her that she just felt detached in a way, a kind of a resignation.”
Requested by Winfrey whether or not it felt like her mom, who had quickly developed an opioid habit after giving start to twin daughters Harper and Finley in 2008, was utilizing medication once more, Keough answered, “It didn’t feel like drugs. I have a lot of experience with the drugs. It felt like a tired person.”
The notion of borrowed time together with her mom stemmed from the demise of Keough’s youthful brother Benjamin, Lisa Marie’s solely son. In July 2020, Benjamin died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the age of 27. The memoir particulars how Lisa Marie saved her son’s physique in a coffin of their house for weeks earlier than bringing him to Graceland to be buried, preserving his stays with dry ice. “What would happen, she would just sit with the body,” quizzed Winfrey, to which Keough replied within the affirmative.
“The moment my brother died, I was like, ‘this is the end of her,’ because they were so close. They were as close as Elvis was with his mother, and I just couldn’t imagine a world where she would make it without him,” she recalled.
Keough additionally recounted the anger she as soon as felt towards her grandfather, Elvis, seeing her mom exist in a perpetual state of grief over his demise.
“I had a mother who was kind of feeling like how could you leave me in a sense, and I lived with that,” she stated. “I was young, but I kind of related him to causing my mother to feel pain, so I remember being young and feeling frustrated that he did that.”
It’s one of many causes Keough has a troublesome relationship with Graceland, the property of which she is now the only real heir.
“I don’t want to come here usually, and I have to sort of force myself to come,” she admitted. “And then once I’m here, I really feel a sense of closeness when I go sit in the meditation garden.”
Elvis, her brother Ben, and her mom Lisa Marie are all buried in Graceland’s meditation backyard, the place her grandmother Priscilla says she additionally needs to be laid to relaxation. As for the long run of the vacationer attraction, which sees some 2,000-plus guests day by day, Keough says she plans to honor what she believes would’ve been her mom’s needs.
“My instinct with everything is always to do what my mother would have wanted, which is to keep it a home,” stated Keough. “It was our family’s home.”
