Priscilla: The Truth About Her Lonely Life With Elvis Presley (& The Drama Behind The Film)

Sofia Coppola’s newest film Priscilla is a beautiful, quiet meditation on a young woman’s painful journey into adulthood in the gilded cage of one of the most famous people on the planet. In Priscilla, Coppola weaves together romance and agony to create a tapestry of feeling – the feeling of love, the feeling of resentment, the feeling of being totally alone. So what is the film really trying to say about Priscilla, Elvis Presley, and their relationship? Let’s unpack the real facts of her real life and the film’s version to get a better understanding of the deeper story Coppola is actually trying to tell. (Plus, we’ll explain the real life Elvis drama the film came up against.)

CHAPTERS
00:00 Sophia Coppola's Priscilla
00:47 Meeting Elvis at 14 years old + the beginning of their relationship
04:52 Priscilla finding herself & becoming her own person
08:06 The film's real-life Elvis drama

CREDITS
Executive Producers: Debra Minoff & Susannah McCullough
Chief Creative Director: Susannah McCullough
Associate Producer: Tyler Allen
Writer: Jessica Babineaux
Narrator: Charly Bovina
Video Editor: Travis Martin

[AyshaRehmen]

I wish you would have clarified that Priscilla's father died when she was a baby, and the man we see in the movie is Priscilla's STEP father, who started a new family with her mother with their own kids, Priscilla being the odd one out. If her real father were alive, I believe he would've protected her differently, and that's an important distinction.

[MADEbySOUL]

When it comes to the riskiness of minors in a relationship with older individuals, some people get stuck on the SA itself. They don’t count isolating a person into an environment they aren’t comfortable in, morphing them into their beauty ideals, and all those “little” lead ups that make them susceptible to the advances. How a person so young would want the approval, acceptance, and love of the man who was basically morphing her.

[c.w.]

Before I watched the movie I didn't realize he openly cheated on her, to the point that she reads about it in the tabloids, and of course he sees it as his right as a man to do that while his child bride is trapped at home, the movie makes you feel like you're suffocating just looking at it from the outside.

[lordfreerealestate]

So many bells were rung in my mind as an abuse survivor when you described the way Priscilla was treated. And the mentality of "it never happened to me" and denial in Lisa Marie's mind is all too common, too.

[jevonsygu]

Love the fact that you keep driving home that she was a teenager

[marissasturzaker]

With all due respect to Lisa Marie, she didn’t know Elvis the way Priscilla did.

[Lbbrooke]

Loved this movie and this is a great analysis!

Something I’d love to see y’all talk about is the idea of the “perfect victim”, which the commentary around this film makes me think about. This idea that if somebody isn’t now then they are unreliable and shouldn’t be trusted in any regard to tell their story. This is also happening with Britney Spears, happened with Rhianna, and so many more. I’m sure it happens to men as well, but especially with women it seems the general public are much happier to dismiss anything they have to say about having been abused if they don’t live up to society’s standard of good.

It’s very much like the “she shouldn’t have been wearing that if she didn’t want to get r*ped” logic.

[marinakukso]

this was a very nice summary, and i really appreciated that you included the actual priscilla's perspective at the end.

[emsantos]

I can understand Lisa Marie wanting to respect her father's image. But as a child we don't see the neglect and abuse between a husband's husband and wife. I've had to come to this realization with my own dad's passing. He was an unique man and a loving father and husband but he had his flaws. The relationship between parents and children is completely different from husband and wife. Elvis was a good performer and we know he loved himself and his family. But the truth is the truth. No need to sugarcoat it.❤

[veronicasmemories]

I'm grateful Pricilla is still alive to review this this movie and get her nuanced perspective of her life

[mattalgrand]

This video really undersells how much of a horror movie PRISCILLA is. I thought Sofia did a brilliant job at depicting the myriad ways in which Priscilla was preyed upon and abused. Graceland is depicted as a house of horrors, and Elvis this meandering monster terrorizing this naive child who is forced to become a strong mother.

Easily my favorite movie of the year.

[HeavenlyPresley-Tonya]

When Elvis Presley romanced German actress, Vera Tschechowa
U.S. army soldier, Elvis Presley, was stationed in Friedberg, Germany from October 1958 to March 1960. While many biographies sum up his love life in Germany as only involving Priscilla, Elvis did not meet Priscilla Beaulieu until September 1959. So for those 11 months before Priscilla entered his life, Elvis dated a lot of other women in Germany.

Even though Elvis had a girlfriend back home in Memphis named Anita Wood


( IN WHICH IN THE FIRST OF THE MOVIE SHE FINDS ANITA'S LETTERS ) AND ELVIS GOES BACK HOME TO ANITA WOOD WHOM HE DATED FROM 1957-1962 GO READ HER BOOK!!!! SHE LEFT ELVIS AFTER HIM SAYING TO HIS DAD OVERHEARING HIM I LOVE BOTH OF THEM - AND NEED TO MAKE A DECISION -- AND SHE MADE THAT DECISION FOR ELVIS AND WALKED OUT --- AND THEY CRIED BUT SHE NEVER WENT BACK UNTIL AFTER ELVIS PASSED AWAY --

[CozieGhosty]

With Lisa Marie (though I can’t say I knew much about her) I feel like it came with her never understanding her father qas a flawed person as we all are. If a grown man is going after a 14 year old, he is a predator. He can be the guy you see as dad and a bad person. Two things can be true.

[susannehuber]

I feel for this young lady being sold like a cow, mistreated, cheated and sexually abused by a man 10 years her senior… who by the way, stole his music from black people. Her life started after the divorce.

[Victrola]

I just saw this film and was surprised at how much I enjoyed the story. While I am not sure I would like to rewatch it, I do feel it is a story that everyone can relate to. You do get a sense that there was love and a longing for creation of a family from both Elvis and Pricilla, yet like he says at the end when she leaves him, the timing was wrong. He wanted the full experience of a career and home life as he saw it and she wanted a bf, a lover, a husband and a man, with whom she would never be lonely. The loneliness united them and if one would take fame out of the equation, perhaps they could have had it all. I feel Sofia did a very good job at respecting the things considered private and showing both the good and the bad. At times I felt parallels with Marie-Antoinette and happy that Princilla grew up and understood that it was time to leave, how brave of a decision was thay, given how her life was controlled and she had to now be on her own.

[marvelsProtege]

I blame the dad more than the mum and Elvis the Dad was the king and he knew what he was going to do with her but he didn't care

[ssissigui]

Let's also respect Lisa Marie's feelings. None of us were there. This Priscilla's perspective, the truth is in the middle most of time. Mays she rest in peace

[armandonieves]

This is a love story, that exist until this day; 2 birds in a cage one of them left the cage the other one couldn't and die after.

[KK-ynxb]

She was a baby when he died… she didn’t even know her father. She knows the Idealistic idea in her imagination of who her father is

[rozie-os]

It makes me very upset that his daughter would try to erase what happened to her mother just to protect the "image" of her father, whom already a a tainted image from all the stealing he did in his career