Sofia Coppola On The Roots Of ‘Priscilla’ And Paying Tribute To The Woman Behind The Myth: “It’s So Hard To Fathom That Her First Kiss Was Elvis Presley”

For half a century now, Priscilla Presley has been asked the same question over and over again: “What was it really like living with Elvis?” This year, we’ve been able to see for ourselves in Sofia Coppola’s tender biopic Priscilla, the story of a young girl swept off her feet by the most famous man on the planet, the first and most enduring rock’n’roll icon, a legend whose luminous fame has not dimmed one iota since his untimely death in 1977, aged just 42.

It’s a fairytale of sorts, in the most romantic and also the darkest sense of the word. In the world outside the musical gates at Graceland, the Memphis estate that Elvis bought for his mother, Priscilla Beaulieu was thought to be living the dream. The reality, however, was different, something that piqued Coppola’s curiosity. Indeed, strong but lonely women are a recurrent theme for the director, and one could make a case for Priscilla being the third in an unofficial trilogy alongside Lost In Translation (2001) and Marie Antoinette (2006).

But although it bears all the hallmarks of a Sofia Coppola movie, it is different in a crucial way: Adapting Priscilla’s memoir for the screen would mark her first real foray into living history. Marie Antoinette was guillotined more than 200 years before Coppola’s film of the same name was crucified, rather unjustly, upon its Cannes Film Festival premiere, and The Bling Ring was only loosely inspired by an article in Vanity Fair. Telling Priscilla’s story would give her access to the source, a chance to see behind the rhinestones and the glamor.

That was not a project without its fair share of perils, especially with regard to Elvis Presley’s estate and the guardians that protect it, but Coppola is also not a director overly troubled by fear. Especially not when confronted with a story that brought together so many of her passions: Music, fashion, and the peculiarities of American pop culture.

As she sits down now to discuss the film, she says she has yet to find the appropriate distance to fully process her experience, let alone to think about what she might do next. But she is ready to reflect on what drew her to Priscilla’s story in the first place, and how she got to the truth about one of the most mythologized marriages of the 20th century…

DEADLINE: How did this story come to you?

SOFIA COPPOLA: I don’t know how I originally ended up with it, but I had the book maybe 10 years ago. I remember it had this great cover. The original cover is mass paperback with a heart-shaped frame and the words, Elvis and Me. I think I picked it up for a fun read, and I didn’t quite expect to be so moved by it. But around the time, my first thought was, ‘I love this kind of character, but is it too much like Marie Antoinette to think about as a film?’

Then, a couple of years ago, I was talking to a friend about Priscilla’s story, and remembering it made me pick the book back up. Re-reading it, it grabbed me in a way where I could see this enticing, inspiring visual world of Graceland and 1960s Memphis. It was something I’d never done, and it was so Americana.

The themes resonated with me again, and I kept thinking about how relatable it was. I thought it said so much about the women of my mother’s generation, who I was raised by, and the expectations of them to stay at home, as though that’s supposed to be fulfilling as her whole life.

DEADLINE: When did it become your next project? 

COPPOLA: During the pandemic, I spent a long time adapting an Edith Wharton project [The Custom of the Country], and it was this massive undertaking. It was a five-hour TV thing that kind of fell apart. So, when I picked this up again I was ready for a palette change. It was something that I felt I just knew how to do. It was in my world, but it was still challenging. So, I got excited about jumping in, just to create this world and tell this story that I felt was so unknown. I had no idea she was in high school when she started living at Graceland. It was full of surprises; she’s such a famous figure in American pop history, but we know so little about her and what it was really like. How could anybody let their kid go and live in Graceland with Elvis Presley while they’re still in high school?

DEADLINE: It’s mad. But as you lay out, it’s also kind of weirdly understandable. The aura and allure that Elvis Presley held was…

COPPOLA: Irresistible. There weren’t as many stars back then as today. The idea of his fame was so overwhelming.

I mean, I tried to be sensitive with all of the characters. I’m looking at the parents’ point of view, but really looking through her eyes. I know when I was 15, if I had a crush on a rock star that started flirting with me — or even if there was an older man flirting with me — I’d have thought I was pretty special. You’d think you were special, and really sophisticated and smart. You wouldn’t see something that might be inappropriate. I really tried to connect it with that teenage crush feeling, and what it must have been like for her to be in his orbit, and how she described it. It’s so hard to fathom that her first kiss was Elvis Presley.

DEADLINE: Meeting Priscilla, what did you make of how she’d processed it all over the years?

COPPOLA: I don’t want to speak for her, but I think it was such a different time that the terminology we use today wasn’t even used. She doesn’t look back on the experience in any kind of damaging way. She had a full relationship with him, they were married, and they had a child. She still looks at it as the great love of her life.

I was just so interested in being at that point in life where you’re trying to form your identity, and then to be with someone with such a strong opinion of how a woman should be. I wanted to focus on the struggles and pressure I felt she must have been under to be this ideal woman. And even when she’s nine months pregnant, she was riding motorcycles and trying to be fun for Elvis, really invested in being his ideal woman.

I was impressed she found the strength to leave him and find her own way. She said she didn’t even know what her taste was until that point, and then she started her whole life. For some people, it would be too hard to get away from that. I can understand how alluring it’d be for someone to say, “Come into my world.” As opposed to trying to figure out your identity on your own, such a hard journey. I really tried hard to translate it just as she expresses the experience.

DEADLINE: You’re not didactic, but you don’t condone anything either. You leave it up to us. People accuse you of being superficial for that, but to do it any other way would be to betray either your own feeling about it, or Priscilla’s.

COPPOLA: I do like movies where things aren’t all spelled out. I really just wanted to show this experience through her eyes, and then let the audience take it in however it affects them. It’s tricky, because you don’t want to be condoning things, but I thought her experience was unique and interesting enough just to present. There are elements of it that are also so relatable, so why not let the audience take from it what they want? I didn’t want to villainize Elvis, but I did want to make it clear it was another era, and to show him as the human that she saw.

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DEADLINE: You mentioned that Priscilla was a woman of your mother’s generation, and that those women had certain expectations placed upon them by marriage. A few years back, your mother spoke to me about those expectations when she made her own debut feature film, after 81 years of life. I know you’re often asked how your father shapes your worldview and your filmmaking. But I wonder how you’d characterize your mother’s impact?

COPPOLA: She definitely made a big impact. On this movie, I was thinking about her and the kind of struggles that she would talk about of being of that generation. When Priscilla wants to get a job, Elvis says, “No, I need you to be at home.” That resonated with the kind of expectation of my mom’s generation. I know that she struggled with having a creative life of her own, and was expected to be a mother and a wife; or at least, those were the priorities.

At that time, I guess wanting something outside of being a mother and a wife was looked at as unusual. It wasn’t just expected, as it is today, that you would want to express yourself outside of that. But even today, there are still remnants of how women see themselves through other eyes, which I think was what made it a rich vein to explore.

My mom is more of a quiet observer, which I think I’ve taken from her into my work. I think that comes through; that aspect of her personality, or what I’ve inherited from her. That side of myself is deeply connected to her. She also exposed us to contemporary art that she was into, and showed us things. People don’t see it as much, but she’s definitely had a big impact on me, and I feel lucky that I have sides of my personality and my approach that come from each of them — my mother and my father.

DEADLINE: You touched on meeting Priscilla. I’m curious how exposed you feel when you first sit down with a person whose story you’re going to adapt. You obviously weren’t able to do that when you set out to make Marie Antoinette. How did that conversation go?

COPPOLA: It really was the first time I’ve ever had that experience. It was nerve-wracking and it felt like a responsibility. But I also felt so lucky to have had access to the person who the story is about, and to be able to fill in the blanks and get more insight and detail from her. And she definitely filled in details that helped me tell her story.

She’s very private, although in the book she reveals personal things. So, it was a sort of balance. I never wanted to pry, but I wanted to get some personal detail from her. As a writer, it was the first time I’d ever had to think about someone’s view of the movie besides my own. I wanted her to like what I came up with, but I also felt I had to make something that felt true to me, and it was a balancing act to match what felt truthful to what she felt comfortable sharing, and what represented her story.

DEADLINE: You received an email from the late Lisa Marie Presley before production began. She expressed frustration for the way your script portrayed events and suggested she would “go against you” publicly if you continued. She died four months later, so never saw the movie. What went through your mind when those emails came?

COPPOLA: I was really stunned to hear that, a couple of weeks before shooting. I felt like it was something between the family that I had no idea about. I felt like it was between them. And of course, I didn’t want to do anything that was going to make anyone uncomfortable. The book had been out for decades by then.

I was really surprised, and I wish she had a chance to see it because I don’t think Elvis comes off badly. I admire him, and I wanted to show the private side, but it is Priscilla’s story. I definitely was always meaning to be sensitive, and I wasn’t trying to take him down in a way that she would be worried about.

DEADLINE: Did it change your approach at all?

COPPOLA: No, because I had always wanted to be sensitive and really show how I interpreted Priscilla talking about him, which was not damning at all. I felt like I was really focused on bringing her story to light.

I can understand that there’s a business there, and a brand, but I just didn’t expect to find myself… I would never want to intrude on a family. I was always planning to approach it with sensitivity, because that’s just the way I do things.

DEADLINE: It doesn’t feel to me that acknowledging the struggles that Priscilla went through and appreciating the impact and artistry of Elvis Presley are mutually exclusive propositions.

COPPOLA: Yeah, my music supervisor Randall [Poster] was like, “I still love Elvis.” The point was never to take him down. It was to tell her story in a truthful way. I thought I learned more about him as an artist and where his struggles came from.

DEADLINE: Were there certain areas of the story that were harder to navigate than others?

COPPOLA: I definitely needed to balance the dark with the light, and I wanted it to be the rollercoaster that Priscilla described it to be. Elvis’s use of prescription pills is a big part of his story, but she never wanted that to be overemphasized.

She always wanted to make sure that the love between them was clear, and there really was a great love there. It was there even in the dark times, and I totally understood the ups and downs of navigating a complex relationship. The love is always there, and you feel it in the way she tells the story.

Part of it was casting Jacob Elordi, who is so charming and lovable. That’s how people describe Elvis. It was important, because it was also why he was able to get away with behavior that wasn’t always the best, or always mature. I felt empathy that she explained where his struggles were coming from and his artistic frustrations. I thought that was important to understand, that it’s not just a guy having a temper, but to understand the pressure he was under.

DEADLINE: You mentioned Jacob; I hadn’t been familiar with Cailee’s work before this movie.

COPPOLA: I hadn’t seen much myself. I’m so grateful that the financiers let me cast an unknown in the lead, and it also makes it more believable than someone you know playing her.

I was really daunted by the question of who I was going to cast that could believably pull off a journey from the age of 14 to 29. I’m so glad my casting people told me about Cailee, and so I watched her in Mare of Easttown. She made a real impression, but it’s another thing to carry a whole movie.

When I met Cailee in person, I found her to be thoughtful and sensitive. And then talking to Kirsten Dunst helped, because they had just worked together. Kirsten said how talented she was and how great she was to work with. I felt I could embark on this with her by my side.

We were going to do a chemistry test with her and Jacob, but we never got around to it. When we jumped into shooting, it was such a relief to see them together, and see that chemistry come off the screen.

But casting Elvis felt impossible too. Nobody looks like Elvis. Jacob’s charisma and sensitivity was important, because that’s how Priscilla described him when she first met him. He was in a vulnerable state, wanting to be a serious actor.

DEADLINE: Did you feel the breath of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis on your back?

COPPOLA: I’d written my script before seeing anything about that, but then I saw it just before going into production. It’s just a totally different kind of movie. I didn’t feel like people said, “Oh, there’s another Elvis movie coming out,” that was a problem for me. It’s like, OK, and then next year you get to hear Priscilla’s story. She’s such a small character in the Baz Luhrmann movie, and it just felt cool to be providing this counterpoint, looking at a similar story from a different side.

Maybe it’s like enough time has passed [to examine this story]. It’s such a big part of our history. My feeling was the two could make a double feature and that it was cool to look at the same story from that flipside while it’s still fresh in our minds.

DEADLINE: Cailee and Jacob feel invested in the story they’re telling. Is it important for you to create space for your actors to feel that sense of investment? That they’re not playing roles but collaborating in what you’re creating?

COPPOLA: I always think of them as that, and I try to set it up that way. I know that they’re putting their necks on the line, and I’m just there to help. We’re all kind of in it together. And we were all taking on something ambitious and scary and just all jumping in together.

With Jacob, I didn’t want a caricature. I wanted him just to embody the essence of Elvis enough to tell her story and give the impression, and the whole thing was just to give an impression of what this moment in time for her was like. So, I think casting good actors and then setting it up in a way that feels always like an intimate set — we spent a lot of time in that bedroom together with Philippe [Le Sourd], the cinematographer — and finding our way and exploring it. It helps to have a sensitive cinematographer too, to create that space to play around and figure it out together.

DEADLINE: How much joy did you find in the Americana of it all? Rebuilding Graceland?

COPPOLA: To me, that’s what the exciting part of being a director and adapting a book is: translating it to the visuals and creating this whole world. Working with the art department and the costumes and making this vivid world.

I love movies that you can just get lost in, and feel like you’re in someone else’s world for two hours. It’s fun. And we had a lot of movie magic. We built it all on set, so just walking onto stage and they’re building Graceland and putting in the shag carpet, and it’s just all the kind of magic of movies. I think that inspires everyone to come together.

DEADLINE: Were you tempted to add some personal touches or was it very much about being accurate to the history?

COPPOLA: I wanted it to feel authentic, and in fact Priscilla said that we got it right. It looked right to her, so I’m glad about that. But then our whole team was like, “We’re not making a documentary.” We could open ourselves to interpretation while just staying within this world that’s believable.

With the bedroom, there weren’t any photos of the bedroom, so that we had to invent, which was fun for the art department to be like, “What would his man cave at Graceland be?”

We have clues that there were some padded doors. They were maybe from another era, but we built on that. In the book, she describes going in his bedroom the first time and how big the bed was and intimidating; thinking about all the women that had been there before her. So, we made the bed extra tall and had this black velvet bedspread. It’s always taking cues from her and her emotional state; the impression of this place through her eyes. There was kind of an Alice in Wonderland feeling of her going into this world. A fairytale that sort of starts melting.

In large part, there were so many photos and home movies and things that we could draw on because it’s such a part of our culture. And it felt so exotic to me. It wasn’t really my world that I grew up in at all. So, I think it has an interesting appeal because it’s so American.

I’d say it was pretty exotic to most of us. Elvis’s tastes in interior design were…

Pretty unique [laughs].

DEADLINE: Does the fairytale aspect come into the fashion?

I love spending time in the costume department because it’s so much fun. It’s always something I’ve been into, but also, it’s such a great way to express a character, and especially her transformation from a little girl to trying to be his ideal woman, to finding her own self at the end in the ’70s. So, it really helped us so much with the characters’ transitions, the hair and makeup, and the clothes, and the colors, and the fact that he was so particular and that you could see that she was more rebellious. She’s wearing bold patterns that he didn’t like. He had such an opinion about style. It seemed to be fun, too. And then also could be oppressive after a while. I can see both sides of it, and how that piled on the pressure.

DEADLINE: This movie opened strong. We are constantly told the desire for independent cinema is dying out, but this movie has clearly connected. You’ve been on the other side, too, where a film like Marie Antoinette doesn’t resonate immediately. It’s taken 17 years, but that movie is finally getting its just reappraisal.

COPPOLA: Yeah, thank you for saying that, we worked so hard on it. We were happy with the way it turned out, and then they were like, “Well, people don’t get it, and think the music’s weird.” It’s hard to hear that. It was hard for me to understand, too, because I was into it, and I thought we pulled off what we were trying to do. I know it was not for everyone.

But yeah, I’m used to not being part of the main culture because I grew up in the time when there were subcultures, so it’s just that movies are so expensive that there’s the moneymaking aspect of it. It was disappointing that it didn’t find, especially, the audience of young women that I thought would connect with it. I think that the studio didn’t really know what to do with it, and it didn’t find its audience until years later. So, it’s really satisfying now that girls are watching it.

And it’s also really exciting that people went to see this, because that’s definitely not a given with my work. So, I’m just happy that I’ve been able to keep making them, and it’s a bonus that people connect. I just try to make enough money that you can make another movie. It was hard to get financing, and I want to come through for financiers who took a risk on this, and it makes me really happy that people are seeming to connect to it.

DEADLINE: Art isn’t always ready at the moment people are ready to receive it.

COPPOLA: Definitely. It’s an expensive artform, filmmaking, but I feel lucky I’ve been able to keep making stuff exactly as I imagined it, and it has been nice recently to feel like people are appreciating the early work that didn’t get seen.

DEADLINE: Does it get harder to carve your small piece of the pie?

COPPOLA: I do think independent film is in a really fragile state, so I think it needs all the support it can get right now. Doing something that’s a little more unusual is harder now than when I started, for sure. But as long as there are filmmakers wanting to tell those stories, I think we’ll keep slipping through the net.

People are checking the algorithm now. That wasn’t a thing that anybody cared about when I was starting out. That’s what it’s all about. I think it’ll help that Priscilla seemed to work, but I haven’t really thought much beyond this week about what I might do next.

DEADLINE: Do you still finish a movie and tell your husband you’ll never make another one?

COPPOLA: I always say that [laughs]. And he’s like, “Oh, you always say that.” I think I’m just tired by the end, and you put yourself so completely into them that it takes a second to regroup. I’m still at that stage with this movie, but I mean, I love making them. There’s nothing like getting your team together and seeing things come to life in front of your camera. I’m just not one of these people that has a bunch of things cooking all at once. I kind of put my heart totally into one thing, and then I have to get my energy back before going back in.

DEADLINE: Does your relationship to your past work change at all?

COPPOLA: I don’t really rewatch them, unless I happen to catch something on TV, we might watch it for a little bit. I showed my kids Lost in Translation before we went to Japan, so I do revisit things by showing them. I do remember seeing The Virgin Suicides a couple of years ago in the theater and thinking how much I loved working with Ed Lachman, and how much I still appreciate his photography. I don’t know, I’m sentimental about them. I remember the experience of making them, and I can never really look at them objectively.